@article {1805,
	title = {Stigmergic coordination in FLOSS development teams: Integrating explicit and implicit mechanisms},
	journal = {Cognitive Systems Research},
	year = {2015},
	month = {12/2015},
	abstract = {The vast majority of literature on coordination in team-based projects has drawn on a conceptual separation between explicit (e.g. plans, feedbacks) and implicit coordination mechanisms (e.g. mental maps, shared knowledge). This analytical distinction presents some limitations in explaining how coordination is reached in organizations characterized by distributed teams, scarce face to face meetings and fuzzy and changing lines of authority, as in free/libre open source software (FLOSS) development.

Analyzing empirical illustrations from two FLOSS projects, we highlight the existence of a peculiar model, stigmergic coordination, which includes aspects of both implicit and explicit mechanisms. The work product itself (implicit) and the characteristics under which it is shared (explicit) play an under-appreciated role in helping software developers manage dependencies as they arise. We develop this argument beyond the existing literature by working with an existing coordination framework, considering the role that the codebase itself might play at each step. We also discuss the features and the practices to support stigmergic coordination in distributed teams, as well as recommendations for future research. {\textquotedblleft}Not everything that implicitly exists needs to be rendered explicit{\textquotedblright} (Sloterdijk, 2009, p. 3).},
	keywords = {Coordination mechanisms, distributed teams, FLOSS teams, Stigmergic coordination},
	issn = {13890417},
	doi = {10.1016/j.cogsys.2015.12.003},
	url = {http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1389041715000339},
	attachments = {https://flosshub.org/sites/flosshub.org/files/COGSYS-RS-\%28HHS\%29-\%282015\%29-\%283\%29.pdf},
	author = {Bolici, Francesco and Howison, James and Kevin Crowston}
}
@conference {708,
	title = {Social dynamics of free and open source team communications},
	booktitle = {OSS2006: Open Source Systems (IFIP 2.13)},
	series = {IFIP International Federation for Information Processing },
	volume = {203/2006},
	year = {2006},
	month = {06/2006},
	pages = {319 - 330},
	publisher = {Springer},
	organization = {Springer},
	abstract = {This paper furthers inquiry into the social structure of free and open source software (FLOSS) teams by undertaking social network analysis across time. Contrary to expectations, we confirmed earlier findings of a wide distribution of centralizations even when examining the networks over time. The paper also provides empirical evidence that while change at the center of FLOSS projects is relatively uncommon, participation across the project communities is highly skewed, with many participants appearing for only one period. Surprisingly, large project teams are not more likely to undergo change at their centers.
},
	keywords = {bug fixing, bug reports, bug tracker, bug tracking, bugs, communications, Dynamic social networks, FLOSS teams, Human Factors, social network analysis, software development, sourceforge},
	issn = {978-0-387-34225-2},
	doi = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/0-387-34226-5_32},
	attachments = {https://flosshub.org/sites/flosshub.org/files/Social\%20dynamics\%20of\%20free\%20and\%20open\%20source\%20team.pdf},
	author = {Howison, James and Inoue, Keisuke and Kevin Crowston}
}
