CAREER: Linking the Solo and Social Levels in Software Engineering

Software development involves both individual and group activities that search for information artifacts such as code and software development documentation. The research objective of this project is to understand and improve the effectiveness of information gathering in software development. The research adopts foraging theory from biological ecology to mathematically model the economics of information gathering. The research will validate the individual foraging model, extending them to group activities. The models attempt to enhance developer productivity by capitalizing on collaboration and learning by quantitatively characterizing the interdependent relationship at the individual and group levels, characterizing the limits, creating optimal solutions within those limits. The technical approach uses systems of networked information economies involving the production, distribution, and consumption of information products (e.g., tags) by decentralized users operating over a network, as in FLOSS (free/libre/open-source software) communities and Wikipedia. In this economy, costs occurring at the personal level benefit not only the individual but also the group (collective, team, society). The broader impacts arise from higher software productivity, new training methods, and a formal theory that can be used in further empirical investigations.