Effective Work Practices for FLOSS Development: A Model and Propositions

Author(s)/Creator(s)

Kevin Crowston, Syracuse University
Hala Annabi, University of Washington
James Howison, Syracuse University
Chengetai Masango, Syracuse University

Document Type

Article

Date

2005

Keywords

Free/Libre Open Source Software, FLOSS, software development

Language

English

Disciplines

Library and Information Science

Description/Abstract

We review the literature on Free/Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS) development and on software development, distributed work and teams more generally to develop a theoretical model to explain the performance of FLOSS teams. The proposed model is based on Hackman’s [1] model of effectiveness of work teams, with coordination theory [2] and collective mind [3] to extend Hackman’s model by elaborating team practices relevant to effectiveness in software development. We propose a set of propositions to guide further research.

Recommended Citation

Crowston, K., Annabi, H., Howison, J. & Masango, C. Effective work practices for FLOSS development: A model and propositions. In Proceedings of the Thirty-Eighth Hawai’i International Conference on System Science (HICSS–38). Kona, HI, USA, January. doi: 10.1109/HICSS.2005.222

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.