An empirical comparison of ethnic and gender diversity of DevOps and non-DevOps contributions to open-source projects

Hana Frluckaj J. Herbsleb Laura A. Dabbish + 2 lainnya

7 November 2022

Open source software represents an important form of digital infrastructure as well as a pathway to technical careers for many developers, but women are drastically underrepresented in this setting. Although there is a good body of literature on open source participation, there is very little understanding of the participation trajectories and contribution experiences of women developers, and how they compare to those of men developers, in open source software projects. In order to understand their joining and participation trajectories, we conducted interviews with 23 developers (11 men and 12 women) who became core in an open source project. We identify differences in women and men's motivations for initial contributions and joining processes (e.g. women participating in projects that they have been invited to) and sustained involvement in a project. We also describe unique negative experiences faced by women contributors in this setting in each stage of participation. Our results have implications for diversifying participation in open source software and understanding open source as a pathway to technical careers.

R. Prikladnicki Karina Kohl

5 Oktober 2022

There is a known and established gender imbalance in software engineering structures. The discussions about gender diversity in Software Engineering are on the table; however, which are the benefits and the difficulties people in software development teams see in gender diversity? For this work, we conducted a survey to qualitatively understand the perceived benefits and difficulties of gender diversity in software development teams. We found out that gender-diverse workplaces are prone to have better ideas sharing, better decision making, creativity, and innovation. Respondents mentioned that some companies worked to improve the hiring process to be more gender-inclusive. Women’s support and inspiration were shared, and some men reported being touched by the subject and diligently are deconstructing their prejudice and misconceptions about women in technology. There are also difficulties. It is common to see only one woman in teams or just a few. More than that, no other gender than men and women, so the white, cisgender man is the pattern most of the time. The same pattern repeats itself in leadership positions leading to male protectionism and privileges. Additionally, other dimensions of diversity pervaded the answers, like intersectionality, race/ethnicity, ageism, and a less explored point: social vulnerability.

Riya Dutta Emad Shihab D. Costa + 1 lainnya

31 Januari 2023

Diversity and inclusion are necessary prerequisites for shaping technological innovation that benefits society as a whole. A common indicator of diversity consideration is the representation of different social groups among software engineering (SE) researchers, developers, and students. However, this does not necessarily entail that diversity is considered in the SE research itself.In our study, we examine how diversity is embedded in SE research, particularly research that involves participant studies. To this end, we have selected 79 research papers containing 105 participant studies spanning three years of ICSE technical tracks. Using a content analytical approach, we identified how SE researchers report the various diversity categories of their study participants and investigated: 1) the extent to which participants are described, 2) what diversity categories are commonly reported, and 3) the function diversity serves in the SE studies.We identified 12 different diversity categories reported in SE participant studies. Our results demonstrate that even though most SE studies report on the diversity of participants, SE research often emphasizes professional diversity data, such as occupation and work experience, over social diversity data, such as gender or location of the participants. Furthermore, our results show that participant diversity is seldom analyzed or reflected upon when SE researchers discuss their study results, outcome or limitations.To help researchers self-assess their study diversity awareness, we propose a diversity awareness model and guidelines that SE researchers can apply to their research. With this study, we hope to shed light on a new approach to tackling the diversity and inclusion crisis in the SE field.

N. Weeraddana Ajiromola Kola-Olawuyi M. Nagappan

15 April 2024

DevOps is a key element in sustaining the quality and efficiency of software development. Yet, the effectiveness of DevOps methodologies extends beyond just technological expertise. It is greatly affected by the manner in which teams handle and engage with DevOps artefacts. Grasping the intricacies of code ownership and contribution patterns within DevOps artefacts is vital for refining strategies and ensuring they deliver their full potential.There are two main strategies to manage DevOps artefacts as suggested in prior work: (1) all project developers need to contribute to DevOps artefacts, and (2) a dedicated group of developers needs to be authoring DevOps artefacts. To analyze which strategy works best for Open-Source Software (OSS) projects, we conduct an empirical analysis on a dataset of 892,193 CircleCI builds spanning 1,689 OSS projects. We employ a two-pronged approach to our study. First, we investigate the impact of chronological code ownership of DevOps artefacts on the outcome of a CI build on a build level. Second, we study the impact of the Skewness of DevOps contributions on the success rate of CI builds at the project level.Our findings reveal that, in general, larger chronological ownership and higher Skewness values of DevOps contributions are related to more successful build outcomes and higher rates of successful build outcomes, respectively. We further find that projects with low Skewness values could have high build success rates when the number of developers in the project is relatively small. Thus, our results suggest that while larger software organizations are better off having dedicated DevOps developers, smaller organizations would benefit from having all developers involved in DevOps.CCS CONCEPTS•Do Not Use This Code → Generate the Correct Terms for Your Paper; Generate the Correct Terms for Your Paper; Generate the Correct Terms for Your Paper; Generate the Correct Terms for Your Paper.

Alicia E. Boyd Hana Winchester Brittany Johnson

1 Mei 2022

The growing ubiquity of machine learning technologies has led to concern and concentrated efforts at improving data-centric research and practice. While much work has been done on addressing equity concerns with respect to unary identities (e.g, race or gender), little to no work in Software Engineering has studied intersectionality to determine how we can provide equitable outcomes for complex, overlapping social identities in data-driven tech. To this end, we designed a survey to learn the landscape of intersectional identities in tech, where these populations contribute data, and how marginalized populations feel about the impact technology has on their day to day lives. Our data thus far, collected from 12 respondents and composed mostly of white and male identities, further highlights the lack of representation in modern data sets and need for contributions that explicitly explore how to support data-driven research and development. ACM Reference Format: Hana Winchester, Alicia E. Boyd, and Brittany Johnson. 2022. An Exploration of Intersectionality in Software Development and Use. In Third Workshop on Gender Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion in Software Engineering (GE@ICSE’22), May 20, 2022, Pittsburgh, PA, USA. ACM, New York, NY, USA, 4 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3524501.3527605