The Role of Social Media Artifacts in Collaborative Software Development by Christoph Treude Dipl.

253 Pages·2012·1.91 MB·English

The Role of Social Media Artifacts in Collaborative Software Development
by
Christoph Treude
Dipl.-Wirt.Inform., University of Siegen, 2007
A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfilment of the
Requirements for the Degree of
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
in the Department of Computer Science
(cid:13)c Christoph Treude, 2012
University of Victoria
All rights reserved. This dissertation may not be reproduced in whole or in part, by
photocopying or other means, without the permission of the author.
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The Role of Social Media Artifacts in Collaborative Software Development
by
Christoph Treude
Dipl.-Wirt.Inform., University of Siegen, 2007
Supervisory Committee
Dr. Margaret-Anne D. Storey, Co-supervisor
(Department of Computer Science)
Dr. Jens H. Weber, Co-supervisor
(Department of Computer Science)
Dr. Raymond G. Siemens, Outside Member
(Department of English)
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Supervisory Committee
Dr. Margaret-Anne D. Storey, Co-supervisor
(Department of Computer Science)
Dr. Jens H. Weber, Co-supervisor
(Department of Computer Science)
Dr. Raymond G. Siemens, Outside Member
(Department of English)
ABSTRACT
Social media mechanisms, such as wikis, blogs, tags and feeds, have transformed the
way we communicate, work and play online. Many of these technologies have made
their way into collaborative software engineering processes and modern software de-
velopment platforms, either as an adjunct or integrated into a wide range of tools
ranging from code editors and issue trackers to IDEs and web-based portals. Based
on the results of several large scale empirical studies, this thesis presents findings on
how social media artifacts, such as tags, feeds and dashboards, bridge lightweight
and heavyweight task management in software development. Furthermore, this work
shows how blogs, developer wikis and Q&A websites are changing the way software
is documented. Based on these findings, the thesis describes a model that character-
izes social media artifacts along several dimensions, such as content type, intended
audience, and review mechanisms. The role of social media artifacts in collaborative
software development lies in the timely dissemination of scenarios and concerns to a
diverse audience through a process of implicit and informal collaboration, triggered
by questions from users or articulation work. These findings lead to tool and process
recommendations as well as the implementation of tools that leverage social media
artifacts, and they indicate that tool support inspired by social media may play an
important role in improving collaborative software development practices.
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Contents
Supervisory Committee ii
Abstract iii
Table of Contents iv
List of Tables ix
List of Figures xi
Acknowledgements xiii
Dedication xv
I Introduction and Literature Review 1
1 Introduction 2
1.1 Research Statement and Scope . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.2 Research Questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
1.3 Contributions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
1.4 Thesis Outline . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
2 Literature Review 14
2.1 Social Aspects in Software Development . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
2.1.1 Empirical Studies on Social Aspects in Software Development 15
2.1.2 Importance of Articulation Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
2.1.3 Need for Informal Tool Support . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
2.1.4 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
2.2 Use of Social Media by Software Developers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
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2.2.1 Social Development Environments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
2.2.2 Wikis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
2.2.3 Blogs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
2.2.4 Microblogs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
2.2.5 Tags . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
2.2.6 Feeds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
2.2.7 Social Networks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
2.2.8 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
II Task Management 29
3 Task Management using IBM’s Jazz 30
3.1 Tagging in IBM’s Jazz . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
3.1.1 Related Work: Tagging and Software Development . . . . . . 32
3.1.2 Work Item Tags in IBM’s Jazz . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
3.1.3 Research Methodology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
3.1.4 Findings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
3.1.5 Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
3.1.6 Limitations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
3.1.7 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
3.2 ConcernLines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
3.2.1 Related Work: Visualization of Software Evolution . . . . . . 65
3.2.2 The ConcernLines Tool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
3.2.3 Example Scenarios . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
3.2.4 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
4 Awareness using IBM’s Jazz 72
4.1 Dashboards and Feeds in IBM’s Jazz . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
4.1.1 Related Work: Awareness in Software Development . . . . . . 74
4.1.2 Dashboards and Feeds in IBM’s Jazz . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
4.1.3 Research Methodology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
4.1.4 Findings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
4.1.5 Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
4.1.6 Limitations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
4.1.7 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
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4.2 WorkItemExplorer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
4.2.1 The WorkItemExplorer Tool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
4.2.2 Example Scenarios . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
4.2.3 Evaluation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98
4.2.4 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102
5 Task Management using Google Code 104
5.1 Labelling on Google Code . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
5.1.1 Task Labels on Google Code . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
5.1.2 Research Methodology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106
5.1.3 Findings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
5.1.4 Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
5.1.5 Limitations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116
5.1.6 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
III Documentation 118
6 Documentation of IBM’s Jazz 119
6.1 Documentation on the Community Portal jazz.net . . . . . . . . . . . 119
6.1.1 Related Work: Knowledge and Documentation in Software De-
velopment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121
6.1.2 The Community Portal jazz.net . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123
6.1.3 Research Methodology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124
6.1.4 Findings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126
6.1.5 Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139
6.1.6 Limitations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143
6.1.7 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143
7 Prevalence of Crowd Documentation 145
7.1 Prevalence of Crowd Documentation in Google Search Results . . . . 146
7.1.1 Related Work: API Documentation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146
7.1.2 Research Methodology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147
7.1.3 Findings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148
7.1.4 Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153
7.1.5 Limitations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155
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7.1.6 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155
8 Crowd Documentation on Stack Overflow 156
8.1 Nature of Crowd Documentation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157
8.1.1 Related Work: Question and Answer Websites and Software
Engineering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158
8.1.2 The Stack Overflow Portal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159
8.1.3 Research Methodology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159
8.1.4 Findings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160
8.1.5 Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164
8.1.6 Limitations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164
8.1.7 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164
8.2 Impact of Crowd Documentation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165
8.2.1 Research Methodology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165
8.2.2 Findings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167
8.2.3 Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171
8.2.4 Limitations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172
8.2.5 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173
IV Implications 174
9 A Model of Social Media Artifacts in Collaborative Software De-
velopment 175
9.1 Social Media Artifacts in Documentation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176
9.2 Social Media Artifacts in Task Management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180
9.3 Social Media Artifacts in Collaborative Software Development . . . . 185
10 Conclusions and Future Work 188
10.1 Contributions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189
10.2 Reflections on Research Methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191
10.3 Future Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193
10.4 Concluding Remarks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195
Bibliography 197
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Appendices 219
A Interview and Survey Questions 220
A.1 Tagging in IBM’s Jazz . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 220
A.2 Dashboards and Feeds in IBM’s Jazz . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 222
A.3 Documentation of IBM’s Jazz . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 229
B WorkItemExplorer Evaluation 232
B.1 Developers’ Questions that WorkItemExplorer Can Answer . . . . . . 232
C Key-Value Pairs on Google Code 237
C.1 Most-Used Keys in Key-Value Pairs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 237
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List of Tables
Table 3.1 Tag related data extracted from repositories . . . . . . . . . . . 39
Table 3.2 Tag keywords with the most instances in Jazz . . . . . . . . . . 44
Table 3.3 Tag keywords with the most instances in EI . . . . . . . . . . . 45
Table 3.4 Most frequently shared tag keywords in Jazz . . . . . . . . . . . 58
Table 3.5 Most frequently shared tag keywords in EI . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
Table 3.6 New categories with possible values, and corresponding tags . . 60
Table 4.1 Viewlet types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
Table 4.2 Number of viewlets per dashboard . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
Table 4.3 Most frequently chosen viewlet types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
Table 4.4 Completion time and views for Task 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
Table 4.5 Completion time and views for Task 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
Table 4.6 Completion time and views for Task 3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
Table 4.7 Completion time and views for Task 4 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
Table 4.8 Views for Task 5 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102
Table 4.9 Queries used by study participants . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102
Table 5.1 Mechanisms for task management used by different projects . . 109
Table 5.2 Key-value pairs with the most instances across all projects . . . 110
Table 5.3 Key-value pairs with the most instances in Android . . . . . . . 111
Table 5.4 Key-value pairs with the most instances in CyanogenMod . . . 111
Table 5.5 Labels with the most instances across all projects . . . . . . . . 112
Table 5.6 Labels with the most instances in Android . . . . . . . . . . . . 112
Table 5.7 Labels with the most instances in CyanogenMod . . . . . . . . 113
Table 5.8 Edit distance of all projects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116
Table 5.9 Most displayed columns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116
Table 6.1 RTC-related artifacts on jazz.net . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124
Table 6.2 Most-used tags in jazz.net library by type . . . . . . . . . . . . 128
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Table 6.3 Role of the official product documentation . . . . . . . . . . . . 130
Table 6.4 Role of technical articles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131
Table 6.5 Role of blogs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132
Table 6.6 Role of wikis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133
Table 7.1 API coverage by different web resources . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149
Table 7.2 Types of blog posts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150
Table 8.1 Data extracted from Stack Overflow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160
Table 8.2 Most-used tag keywords on Stack Overflow . . . . . . . . . . . 161
Table 8.3 Coding of tags on Stack Overflow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161
Table 8.4 Coding of questions on Stack Overflow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162
Table 9.1 Social media artifacts in documentation . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177
Table 9.2 Social media artifacts in task management . . . . . . . . . . . . 181
Table 9.3 Social media artifacts in collaborative software development . . 186
Table C.1 Keys with the most instances across all projects . . . . . . . . . 237
Table C.2 Keys with the most instances in Android . . . . . . . . . . . . . 238
Table C.3 Keys with the most instances in CyanogenMod . . . . . . . . . 238