Analyzing collaboration in software development processes through social networks

Abstract

Plan-driven, agile or free/open source are software development models that although effective, cannot fully address all the variability of projects and organizations alone. In this work, it is argued that two distinct characteristics of these models - collaboration and discipline - can be the drivers to tailor software development processes to meet projects and organizations needs. In particular, this article focuses on the aspect of collaboration and argues that it can be analyzed through social networks. In this sense, we studied several tools and identified the requirements necessary to explore collaboration, through social networks, in software development processes. These requirements motivated the construction of EvolTrack- SocialNetwork tool. © 2010 Springer-Verlag.