Examining Ownership Models in Software Teams: A Systematic Literature Review and a Replication Study

Fuente: arXiv
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Hauptverfasser: Koana, Umme Ayman, Le, Quang Hy, Rahman, Shadikur, Carlson, Chris, Chew, Francis, Nayebi, Maleknaz
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2024
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author Koana, Umme Ayman
Le, Quang Hy
Rahman, Shadikur
Carlson, Chris
Chew, Francis
Nayebi, Maleknaz
author_facet Koana, Umme Ayman
Le, Quang Hy
Rahman, Shadikur
Carlson, Chris
Chew, Francis
Nayebi, Maleknaz
contents Effective ownership of software artifacts, particularly code, is crucial for accountability, knowledge sharing, and code quality enhancement. Researchers have proposed models linking ownership of software artifacts with developer performance and code quality. Our study aims to systematically examine various ownership models and provide a structured literature overview. Conducting a systematic literature review, we identified 79 relevant papers published between 2005 and 2022. We developed a taxonomy of ownership artifacts based on type, owners, and degree of ownership, along with compiling modeling variables and analytics types used in each study. Additionally, we assessed the replication status of each study. As a result, we identified nine distinct software artifacts whose ownership has been discussed in the literature, with "Code" being the most frequently analyzed artifact. We found that only three papers (3.79%) provided code and data, whereas nine papers (11.4%) provided only data. Using our systematic literature review results, we replicated experiments on nine priority projects at \texttt{Brightsquid}. The company aimed to compare its code quality against ownership factors in other teams, so we conducted a replication study using their data. Unlike prior studies, we found no strong correlation between minor contributors and bug numbers. Surprisingly, we found no strong link between the total number of developers modifying a file and bug counts, contrasting previous findings. However, we observed a significant correlation between major contributors and bug counts, diverging from earlier research.
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id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2405_15665
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Examining Ownership Models in Software Teams: A Systematic Literature Review and a Replication Study
Koana, Umme Ayman
Le, Quang Hy
Rahman, Shadikur
Carlson, Chris
Chew, Francis
Nayebi, Maleknaz
Software Engineering
Effective ownership of software artifacts, particularly code, is crucial for accountability, knowledge sharing, and code quality enhancement. Researchers have proposed models linking ownership of software artifacts with developer performance and code quality. Our study aims to systematically examine various ownership models and provide a structured literature overview. Conducting a systematic literature review, we identified 79 relevant papers published between 2005 and 2022. We developed a taxonomy of ownership artifacts based on type, owners, and degree of ownership, along with compiling modeling variables and analytics types used in each study. Additionally, we assessed the replication status of each study. As a result, we identified nine distinct software artifacts whose ownership has been discussed in the literature, with "Code" being the most frequently analyzed artifact. We found that only three papers (3.79%) provided code and data, whereas nine papers (11.4%) provided only data. Using our systematic literature review results, we replicated experiments on nine priority projects at \texttt{Brightsquid}. The company aimed to compare its code quality against ownership factors in other teams, so we conducted a replication study using their data. Unlike prior studies, we found no strong correlation between minor contributors and bug numbers. Surprisingly, we found no strong link between the total number of developers modifying a file and bug counts, contrasting previous findings. However, we observed a significant correlation between major contributors and bug counts, diverging from earlier research.
title Examining Ownership Models in Software Teams: A Systematic Literature Review and a Replication Study
topic Software Engineering
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.15665