The dynamics of leadership and success in software development teams.

ABSTRACT: From science to industry, teamwork plays a crucial role in knowledge production and innovation. Most studies consider teams as static groups of individuals, thereby failing to capture how the micro-dynamics of collaborative processes and organizational changes determine team success. Here, we leverage fine-grained temporal data on software development teams from three software ecosystems - Rust, JavaScript, and Python - to gain insights into the dynamics of online collaborative projects. Our analysis reveals an uneven workload distribution in teams, with stronger heterogeneity correlated with higher success, and the early emergence of a lead developer carrying out the majority of work. Moreover, we find that a sizeable fraction of projects experience a change of lead developer, with such a

SUBMITTER: Betti L 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12034773 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature