In the September/October issue of IEEE Software, there is an article
entitled "A field study of developer pairs: productivity impacts and
implications." This study talks about some prior research by the authors
where they correlated a "concurrency metric" (which is basically calculated
as the number of developers working on the same module in the same day) to
some sort of productivity metric, finding that developers working alone
were significantly more productive than those working together. They then
tried to rationalize their research with pair programming, which would
appear to contradict their prior findings.
The concurrency metric would be an interesting thing to provide as a
DailyProjectData/Reduction Function/Telemetry Stream. We could build on
the existing research in a couple of ways:
1. Try to replicate their findings, and see if we see the same effect on
some proxy for productivity.
2. Try to extend the research by looking for the impact of the concurrency
metric on other facets of development--test cases, builds, reviews, etc.
Cheers,
Philip
