Would you mind fixing this issue? An empirical analysis of politeness and attractiveness in software developed using agile boards

Marco Ortu, Giuseppe Destefanis, Mohamad Kassab, Steve Counsell, Michele Marchesi, Roberto Tonelli

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

Abstract

A successful software project is the result of a complex process involving, above all, people. Developers are the key factors for the success of a software development process and the Agile philosophy is developer-centred. Developers are not merely executors of tasks, but actually the protagonists and core of the whole development process. This paper aims to investigate social aspects among developers working together and the appeal of a software project developed with the support of Agile tools such as Agile boards. We studied 14 open source software projects developed using the Agile board of the JIRA repository. We analysed all the comments committed by the developers involved in the projects and we studied whether the politeness of the comments affected the number of developers involved over the years and the time required to fix any given issue. Our results show that the level of politeness in the communication process among developers does have an effect on the time required to fix issues and, in the majority of the analysed projects, it has a positive correlation with attractiveness of the project to both active and potential developers. Themore polite developers were, the less time it took to fix an issue, and, in the majority of the analysed cases, the more the developers wanted to be part of project, the more they were willing to continue working on the project over time.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publicationAgile Processes, in Software Engineering, and Extreme Programming - 16th International Conference, XP 2015, Proceedings
EditorsTorgeir Dingsoyr, Casper Lassenius, Maria Paasivaara
PublisherSpringer Verlag
Pages129-140
Number of pages12
ISBN (Print)9783319186115
DOIs
StatePublished - 2015
Event16th International Conference on Agile Software Development, XP 2015 - Helsinki, Finland
Duration: May 25 2015May 29 2015

Publication series

NameLecture Notes in Business Information Processing
Volume212
ISSN (Print)1865-1348

Conference

Conference16th International Conference on Agile Software Development, XP 2015
Country/TerritoryFinland
CityHelsinki
Period5/25/155/29/15

Keywords

  • Agile
  • Data mining
  • Kanban board
  • Social and human aspect

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Management Information Systems
  • Control and Systems Engineering
  • Business and International Management
  • Information Systems
  • Modeling and Simulation
  • Information Systems and Management

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