Service networks for development communities

Abstract

Communities of developers have rapidly become global, encompassing multiple timezones and cultures alike. In previous work we investigated the possible shapes of communities for software development. In addition, we explored mechanisms to uncover communities emerging during development. However, we barely scratched the surface. We found that development communities yield properties of dynamic change and organic evolution. Much work is still needed to support such communities with mechanisms able to proactively react to community dynamism. We argue that service-networks can be used to deliver this support. Service-networks are sets of people and information brought together by the internet. This paper is a first attempt at studying this research area by means of a real-life case-study in a large global software development organisation.