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Peer Reviews as a Quality Management Technique in Open-Source Software Development Projects

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Software Quality — ECSQ 2002 (ECSQ 2002)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 2349))

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Abstract

This paper focuses on peer review as a quality management technique used in open-source software (OSS) development and the similarities and differences with those of traditional development. The organizational commitment of OSS developers to quality is also explored. A comprehensive web-based questionnaire was completed by OSS and traditional developers. It was found that peer review is generally considered very useful for detecting both defects and flaws in code, as well as being important in contributing to the quality of the software. It is suggested that OSS developers commit to quality through internalization — adopting the ideas as their own, as the majority of the developers indicated that they would perform peer reviews without management direction. Encouragement to perform peer reviews and an organizational culture of peer review make it more likely for the developers to perform peer review under their own initiative, but neither are essential.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Computing and Information Technology, Griffith University, Q 4111, Australia

    Jacqueline Stark

Authors
  1. Jacqueline Stark
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Nokia Research Center, Nokia Group, Nokia Group, P. O. Box 407, 00045, Finland

    Jyrki Kontio

  2. Department of Computer and Information Science (IDI), Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Gloeshaugen, 7491, Trondheim, Norway

    Reidar Conradi

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© 2002 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Stark, J. (2002). Peer Reviews as a Quality Management Technique in Open-Source Software Development Projects. In: Kontio, J., Conradi, R. (eds) Software Quality — ECSQ 2002. ECSQ 2002. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 2349. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-47984-8_37

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-47984-8_37

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-43749-9

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-47984-0

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

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