Bilkent University
Department of Computer Engineering
CS590/690 SEMINAR
A Network Oriented Approach for Quantifying Developer Impact
Selen Uysal
Master Student
(Supervisor: Asst.Prof.Eray Tüzün )
Computer Engineering Department
Bilkent University
Abstract: Efficiency is paramount to the progress of the fast-paced software industry. To assess a team's efficiency, one must understand the impact of contributions made by team members. Evaluating individual contributions within collaborative software projects poses a significant challenge. Traditional metrics like lines of code or commit counts fail to provide a comprehensive context, considering that code varies in importance and complexity. Objective: Drawing inspiration from Hirsch's H-Index, a standard academic metric, we sought to find potential methods to quantify and contrast developer contributions effectively. Method: We began by computing an H-Index proxy for developers. Our methodology involved considering method calls within a software project as analogous to citations in academic research. Construction of our metric involved the construction of method networks to calculate reference values. We expanded our research by also analyzing lines of code and complexity factors. Result: We evaluated our indexes in 2 OSS projects. Using number of lines of code, complexity and usage of methods as a determinant of contributions led to a comprehensive quantification of impact. Our metric smoothed out the impact of disproportionate methods such as accessor methods that are called many times. Conclusions: As an advantage to the simple evaluation of contribution as the number of lines of code or the number of commits, our metric can evaluate developers in a software project team from various angles. It is advised to use the resulting metric and tool as an additional source to get deeper insights.
DATE: October 16th, Monday @ 15:30 EA-502