Discovering, Modeling, and Re-enacting Work Processes and Practices in Free/Open Source Software Development Projects

1. Discovering, Modeling, and Re-enacting Work Processes and Practices in Free/Open Source Software Development Projects Walt Scacchi, Chris Jensen, John Noll and Margaret Elliott Institute for Software Research University of California, Irvine

2. Context • Discovering hidden processes within a large-scale, global, loosely-coordinated open source software development (OSSD) project. • Thousands of project participants • Developing, managing, and evolving over one million knowledge-intensive artifacts • Weakly coordinated by centralized authorities • All data are open source

3. Context • Discover, model, (re-)enact, and repair processes • Discover process context, participant roles, tools, resources, interdependencies within and across projects over the Web • Why? • Enterprises don’t know their processes • Process improvement, optimization, redesign • Process interdiction w/ competitive advantage

4. Overview • Process discovery • Process modeling • Process re-enactment • Discussion • Conclusions

5. Process discovery • Participant observation (online, Web-based) • Collection and annotation of participant created/modified artifacts • Objects of interaction • How objects are situated in facilitating collaboration, conflict, or conflict mitigation • Tracking artifacts added or modified in response to intra-community or inter-community dynamics • Automated process data mining, categorization, and composition

6. Annotated chat transcript • <CyrilB> Hello (Outsider Critique-1 • <CyrilB> Several images on the website seem to be made with non‑free Adobe software, I hope I'm wrong: it is quite shocking. Does anybody know more on the subject ? • <CyrilB> We should avoid using non‑free software at all cost, am I wrong ? (Extreme belief in free software (BIFS)-1) • <CyrilB> Anyone awake in here ? Outsider Critique-1)

7. Current challenges • Examining multiple OSSD processes across multiple interrelated OSSD projects. • NetBeans.org, Mozilla.org, Apache.org, BioBeans.org, Tigris.org, Java Tool Community, etc. • Leadership and control sharing within and across individuals, work groups, and projects as sources of coordination and conflict.

8. JCP Conflict Coordination Coordination Conflict Open Office Coordination Coordination Conflict Coordination W3C Conflict Conflict Coordination Conflict Conflict Coordination NetBeans.org Community Ecosystem

9. Boundary Objects of Interaction • Development artifacts (“software informalisms”) • Protocols • HTTP, RPCs • Shared data formats • HTML, XML, CGI • Community infrastructure tools • Defect repositories (e.g. Bugzilla), Collaborative development and communication tools (e.g. CVS, online chat, discussion forums) • Product infrastructure • Plug-ins, Modules, Helper applications • OSSD processes

10. Coordination Conflict Conflict Coordination Direct Interaction Tomcat

11. Intra-community issues • Collaboration • Guidelines and policies • Development tasks; style guidelines; public “floggings” • Separation of concerns: • architectural strategy (plug-ins) for collaborative success; • freedom of extension/expression through contributed source code--reduces involvement with socio-political project issues • Volunteer versus salaried developers--collaboration breakdowns lead to product failures

12. Intra-community issues • Leadership and Control • Accountability and expectations based on precedent and volunteerism • Transparency in decision-making • Project “management” limited to coordinating roles • Consent in decision-making • Many contributors assume consensus decision-making, and breakdowns arise when Sun asserts prerogative • Conflict Resolution • Not face-to-face • Generally done in “public” via discourse transactions on discussion forums, else turned over to community governance board for resolution.

13. Indirect process interactions across projects Tomcat integration into NetBeans, compliance with W3C standards, Apache Ant integration into NetBeans NetBeans and Mozilla developers collaborate on spell-checking module, NetBeans adopts Mozilla super review process Apache releases new version of Tomcat NetBeans workarounds for Mozilla shortcuts Bugzilla, compliance with W3C standard protocols/data formats, compressed HTTP module support, Javascript support Browser-specific actions, browser-error workarounds, Changes in: HTTP, CCS, DOM, URI/URL, XML, XHTML standards

14. Inter-community issues • Communication and collaboration • Bug reports and feature requests • Patches submitted • Java.net, Java Tools Community, and Java Community Process • Leadership and control across projects • Sun NetBeans vs. IBM Eclipse • Conflict resolution • Mailing lists; Slashdot; Developer blogs

15. Process modeling • Rich pictures with hyperlinked Use Case scenarios • Directed and attributed resource flow graph • Process domain ontology

16. Rich Picture Funds, support, Promote Java/Open source Sun Microsystems Download and use free software Share knowledge and ensure all community issues are addressed Ensure that the netbeans community is being run in a fair and open manner Configure and maintain CVS Community Manager Start new release phase, propose schedule/plan respond to tech issues, unanswered questions Release Manager make decisions for the community, on high level download new release The Board Users report bugs release proposal, release updates, branch for current release, release post mortem, review release candidates (2) & decide final release grant access CVS Manager Mailing Lists Manage website Website Tools deploy builds download development builds and test, release Q-builds SourceCast CVS IssueZilla decide features for the project and merge patches/bug fixes, create module web page Site Administrator select feature to develop, bug to fix, download netbeans, commit code QA Team Produce Q- builds and ensure quality of the software Maintain a project/ module, manage a group of developers Contribute to community, meet time constraints for the release grant CVS commit privilege to developers Maintainer Developers/ Contributors Link to all Use Cases Link to Tools Links to all Agents

19. NetBeans

20. Process re-enactment • Generating executable or re-enactable process specifications from ontology • “Low-fidelity” process re-enactment support • We don’t try to model everything • Focus on resource flow patterns • Accommodate gaps and detect inconsistencies in process enactment models • Re-enactments are interactive, navigational, and grounded in artifacts, tools, roles, and resource dependencies resulting from discovery and modeling

21. Formal model of a Netbeans.org process coded in PML(excerpt) • ... • sequence Test { • action Execute automatic test scripts { • requires { Test scripts, release binaries } • provides { Test results } • tool { Automated test suite (xtest, others) } • agent { Sun ONE Studio QA team } • script { /* Executed off-site */ } } • action Execute manual test scripts { • requires { Release binaries } • provides { Test results } • tool { NetBeans IDE } • agent { users, developers, Sun ONE Studio QA team, Sun ONE Studio developers } • script { /* Executed off-site */ } } • iteration Update Issuezilla { • action Report issues to Issuezilla { • requires { Test results } • provides { Issuezilla entry } • tool { Web browser } • agent { users, developers, Sun ONE Studio QA team, Sun ONE Studio developers } • script { • <br><a href="http://www.netbeans.org/issues/">Navigate to Issuezilla </a> • <br><a href="http://www.netbeans.org/issues/query.cgi">Query Issuezilla </a> • <br><a href="http://www.netbeans.org/issues/enter_bug.cgi">Enter issue </a> } } • …

22. PML validation analysis

23. PML analysis detail (excerpt)

26. Discussion • Patterns of interaction about objects or artifacts • Discovering and modeling socio-technical and cultural evolution processes • Validation strategies and tactics • Process discovery, modeling, and re-enactment implications • MKIDS Integration

27. Patterns of interaction about boundary objects/artifacts • Patterns can be detected and include: • Integration of a tool or support for a technology created by another community that create, update, or manage shared objects • Defect detection and reduction • Organizations contribute defect reports/patches detected in another organization's tool or technology implementation • Infrastructure evolution planning • Research contributing to discussions of future/changes in tools and technologies • Discovery, assessment of effects on one’s own community • These interactions give rise to additional opportunities for coordination and conflict

28. Socio-technical and cultural evolution processes • New processes under study • Joining and contributing to a project in progress • Role-task migration: from project periphery to center • Alliance formation and community development • Independent and autonomous project communities can interlink via social networks that manipulate objects of interaction • Enables possible exponential growth of interacting and interdependent community as socio-technical interaction network

30. Validation strategies and tactics • Multi-mode modeling • Collection and annotation of artifacts • Rich pictures with hyperlinked Use Case scenarios • Directed and attributed resource flow graph • Process domain ontology construction • Simulated process re-enactment • Process model language generated from ontology • PML compiled into re-enactment environment • Automated PML source validation • Simulated walkthrough of process • Integration via ethnographic hypermedia • Open to independent validation and interactive traceability

31. Discovery, modeling and re-enactment implications • Discovering, modeling, and understanding “hidden” software processes in large OSSD projects • requires semi-automated process discovery techniques • must span multi-project ecosystem • Discovered processes (still) need to be modeled as narrative, hypermedia, and formal computational models. • Understanding large, aggregated Internet-based projects requires process discovery, modeling tools, re-enactment and validation techniques.

32. Where We’re Going

33. MKIDS Integration • Integration with USC efforts examined and feasible • Text analysis, categorization, summarization • Process taxonomies • Integration with OSU, Stanford, and CMU efforts appear feasible • Task analysis • Process simulation and modeling • Social network analysis • Other MKIDS modeling and scheduling efforts might be possible to integrate

34. Conclusions • We are examining processes within and across multiple projects spanning multiple loosely-coupled communities • Multiple project/organizational interaction may be coordinative or conflictive • Interaction is driven by ongoing synchronization and stabilization of objects of interaction across project communities • Project interaction patterns are emerging, detectable, modeled, and suitable for simulated re-enactment • Discovering, modeling, validating, and re-enacting hidden processes within and across multiple inter-dependent projects is challenging and important.

35. References • D.C. Atkinson, D.C. Weeks, and J. Noll. The Design of Evolutionary Process Modeling Languages, Proc. 11th Asia-Pacific Software Engineering Conf., Dec. 2004. • D.C. Atkinson and J. Noll. Automated Validation and Verification of Process Models, Proc. 7th Intern. IASTED Conf. Software Engineering and Applications, November 2003. • C. Jensen and W. Scacchi, Discovering, Modeling, and Reenacting Open Source Software Development Processes, Institute for Software Research, Submitted for publication, March 2004. • C. Jensen and W. Scacchi, Process Modeling the Web Information Infrastructure, Proc. 5th. Software Process Simulation and Modeling Workshop, Edinburgh, Scotland, May 2004.

36. References • C. Jensen and W. Scacchi, Data Mining for Software Process Discovery in Open Source Software Development Communities, Proc. Workshop on Mining Software Repositories, 96-100, Edinburgh, Scotland, May 2004. • C. Jensen and W. Scacchi, Collaboration, Leadership, Control, and Conflict Negotiation in the NetBeans.org Community, Proc. 4th. Workshop on Open Source Software Engineering, 48-52, Edinburgh, Scotland, May 2004. • W. Scacchi, Socio-Technical Interaction Networks in Free/Open Source Software Development Processes, revised version to appear in S.T. Acuña and N. Juristo (eds.), Peopleware and the Software Process, World Scientific Press, 2004. • W. Scacchi, C. Jensen, J. Noll and M. Elliott, Multi-Modal Modeling of Open Source Software Requirements Processes, submitted for publication, September 2004.

37. Acknowledgements • Project collaborators: • Darren Atkinson, Santa Clara University • Margaret Ellliot, Chris Jensen, UCI-ISR • Mark Ackerman, UMichigan, Ann Arbor • Les Gasser, UIUC • Funding support (no endorsement implied): • National Science Foundation #0083075, #0205679, #0205724, and #0350754.