Gender and Tenure Diversity in GitHub Teams

Software development is usually a collaborative venture.
Open Source Software (OSS) projects are no exception; indeed,
by design, the OSS approach can accommodate teams
that are more open, geographically distributed, and dynamic
than commercial teams. This, we find, leads to OSS teams
that are quite diverse. Team diversity, predominantly in of-
fline groups, is known to correlate with team output, mostly
with positive effects. How about in OSS?
Using GITHUB, the largest publicly available collection of
OSS projects, we studied how gender and tenure diversity
relate to team productivity and turnover. Using regression
modeling of GITHUB data and the results of a survey, we
show that both gender and tenure diversity are positive and
significant predictors of productivity, together explaining a
sizable fraction of the data variability. These results can
inform decision making on all levels, leading to better outcomes
in recruiting and performance.