The work-reflection-learning cycle - Department of Computer and ...

community, however, Ethan always convincingly represented the
team and their work.
Third, illustrating the previous point, no one in the team but Ethan
actually took any initiative towards the PLENTI community. It was
not until the lead programmers decided that something must be done
about the lack of PLENTI skills and usage in the project, that
effective interaction happened. In our case, it took a programmer not
only to undertake the role as broker, but also to understand that
someone needed to take that role.
6.1.3 The credibility gained through OSS participation
Being acknowledged as a participant in a developer community is
likely to add to the self consciousness of the participant. When a
contribution is met by a response in a forum, the community
membership of the contributor is acknowledged. When a
contribution is openly praised in the forum, the skills of the
participant are implicitly valued, and his credibility in the forum is
maintained or strengthened. If the participant is relatively
inexperienced and do not already participate actively on several
related arenas, the newly earned credibility is likely to be a source
of pride and increased self confidence. Also, the credibility won can
be demonstrated to others outside the community, adding to
credibility and strengthening authority there as well. From our case,
we draw some illustrative points:
In Exhibit 4, the last response from Bernhard to Ethan includes the
following: “Wonderful! Several people have asked for it in the past,
it would be a very welcome contribution to the project.” The
contribution of Ethan and the team is thus publicly acknowledged as
something relevant and welcome. The positive response was
referred to by Ethan on later occasions, e.g. in customer meetings.
In team-internal conversation, Ethan on some occasions talked of
Bernhard almost as if he was a buddy, using his first name. Ethan
also pointed out to the team how quick Bernard was at providing
them with response, and often outside of normal work hours.
Ethan’s pride in the engagement of the team with the PLENTI
developer community was very visible whenever the project was
accounted for in meetings with supervisor or customer in the last
part of the project. On one hand, referring to ongoing successful
interaction with the PLENTI community served as a way of
ensuring project stakeholders that the project was in fact
progressing. On the other hand, it may be seen as a way of assuring
the stakeholders that the team were competent, doing development
work of a standard acceptable to the framework developer
community.
Finally, whereas the fourth phase of OSS interaction, contributing to
the framework, might not have been strictly necessary for the team’s
development task, it might have benefited the development task
indirectly: Ethan’s positive attitude towards contributing to the
PLENTI development might have inspired Bernhard to give better,
faster or more elaborate response.
6.2 OSS community participation aided by a
broker: Benefits and pitfalls for SE projects
Turning focus to what we see as benefits and pitfalls of having
student SE teams acquire knowledge from OSS communities, we
give a final account of the impact of OSS community involvement
on the Anniva team, looking at their project more broadly.
The team succeeded with their development task, producing a
working system by active use of advice received from the OSS
community. On the other hand, the project report suffered from a
lack of attention from the programmers. The poor quality of the
report was a main reason for the project receiving a B and not an A,
according to course staff in the grading meeting.
It is only a guess that the team in our case would have been no more
concerned about the project report if they did not have to interact
with an OSS community. The focus on programming (at the cost
e.g. of developing models and documentation) might be seen as a
consequence of a lack of experience and maturity in terms of project
management, or as a legal choice of prioritizing what was to the
team the essence of the project. In respect of the team postponing
the work with design and architecture modeling, it is worth noting
that the PLENTI framework can be seen as an example of a third
party software component, unfamiliar to the team and poorly
documented, which implies a realistic SE challenge of determining
when to attempt to develop an overall design and when to start using
the component [6].
Communicating in the OSS forum appeared to be a gratifying
experience for the broker. The team was vulnerable to his absence,
but that problem never occurred. Also, our observations indicate
that the broker shared his knowledge from the OSS forum with the
rest of the team in an open and effective way. It is difficult to say if
he spent too much of the project time in the forum, or if the team
spent too much time on programming tasks based on the results of
the interaction. The fact that the interaction took place only in the
last part of the project, indicates a limited use of project time. Also,
the team’s interaction with the OSS community having to do with
changes to PLENTI constituted only a small part of the interaction.
Finally, these discussions were closely related to pertinent
development tasks in the project.
The fact that Ethan did not mention in the individual reflection note
his role in the communication with the PLENTI community, might
indicate that he did not consider it as something requiring a
substantial part of his time or being very important to the project,
but there may be other reasons why he did not mention his
brokering role. As for the power of the broker, Owen (on reading a
draft of this paper) expresses uncertainty about how much power
Ethan gained through his gatekeeping role. Owen had not until now
reflected much on the importance of the interaction with the
PLENTI community. It may be the case that Owen and Ethan take
their successful OSS community interaction for granted,
underestimating the communication skills actually required.
Finally, balancing our previous focus on the significance of OSS
participation to the team, we should note that communicating with
the PLENTI community was one out of several activities important
to the project. The power structures in the team may be seen to have
mirrored the complementary skills and interests of the two lead
programmers, which ensured a certain balance in power between the
two. Nevertheless, given our findings, our interpretation is that the
team, and the broker in particular, were both challenged and
inspired by the fact that they were participants in, and contributors
to the PLENTI OSS community and considered it an essential part
of their project experience.
Leaving the story of the auctioning system project, we now turn to
what we see as more general benefits and pitfalls – in terms of a
good project result - for student SE teams in need of interacting with
OSS communities as part of their development work.
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