What is the expected effect of Team Size on Software Productivity?

Research Question

Main question:
What evidence is there for the accuracy/usefulness of the prediction and measurement methods?

Secondary Questions:
1) Is there any measurement that can support  prediction and measurement methods? If so, is it always true for different software processes?

2) Which factors (or drivers or constructs) have been used to define/compose/describe such prediction and measurement  methods?

Search String

(("software process" OR "software development" OR "software engineering processes" OR "business information system" OR "software maintenance" OR "software project" OR "open source project" OR "OSS project") AND (productivity OR efficiency OR "process performance" OR "development performance" OR "software performance" OR "project performance" OR "prediction method" OR "measurement method") AND (measure OR metric OR model OR predict OR estimate OR measurement OR estimation OR prediction) AND (empirical OR validation OR evaluation OR experiment OR example OR simulation OR analysis OR study OR interview))

Inclusion Criteria

• To talk about: Performance, productivity or efficiency of software development, software processes, software projects, software developers, or; Relations between different direct measurements or attributes (like size and effort, or reliability and effort, lead-time and resources, or multivariate relations) that are used to characterize the performance, productivity or efficiency of software development, software processes, software projects or software developers. Proof of concept, experiment, case study, example or other empirical research methods to show its applicability and usefulness/accuracy. It is also reasonable to consider papers that are based on real-world data from software repositories.

Exclusion Criteria

• Productivicty (efficiency) measurement and prediction is not the main focus. Talking about direct measures that are not combined with other measures and thus no claims regarding productivity, efficiency and performance are possible. The synthesis of evidence is based on the primary studies identified by the search. The secondary studies are excluded from the actual synthesis and results. Talking about measures for single techniques, which do not give an indication how well organizations or teams performs on the overall process level or within a development phase. Studies that have not evaluated a solution (be it in an experiment, proof of concept, or a case study) shall be excluded.

• Impact of personnel factors on the recovery of delayed software projects: A system dynamics approach
• An empirical study of software productivity
• Configuring global software teams: a multi-company analysis of project productivity, quality, and profits
• Software development productivity of European space, military, and industrial applications
• Empirical findings on team size and productivity in software development
• From Aristotle to Ringelmann: a large-scale analysis of team productivity and coordination in Open Source Software projects
• Agile software development: Impact on productivity and quality
• A software development productivity model for MIS environments

• A software development productivity model for MIS environments
• Study Type : Non Systematic
• Quality evaluation
• Evidence
• Software development productivity of European space, military, and industrial applications
• Study Type : Observational
• Quality evaluation
• Evidence
• An empirical study of software productivity
• Study Type : Observational
• Quality evaluation
• Evidence
• Impact of personnel factors on the recovery of delayed software projects: A system dynamics approach
• Study Type : Observational
• Quality evaluation
• Evidence
• From Aristotle to Ringelmann: a large-scale analysis of team productivity and coordination in Open Source Software projects
• Study Type : Observational
• Quality evaluation
• Evidence
• Software productivity analysis with CSBSG data set
• Study Type : Observational
• Quality evaluation
• Empirical findings on team size and productivity in software development
• Study Type : Observational
• Quality evaluation
• Evidence
• Configuring global software teams: a multi-company analysis of project productivity, quality, and profits
• Study Type : Observational
• Quality evaluation
• Evidence
• Agile software development: Impact on productivity and quality
• Study Type : Non Systematic
• Quality evaluation
• Evidence

• Team Size affecting Software productivity
• Evidence based on the paper "Configuring global software teams: a multi-company analysis of project productivity, quality, and profits"
• Evidence based on the paper "From Aristotle to Ringelmann: a large-scale analysis of team productivity and coordination in Open Source Software projects"
• Evidence based on the paper "A software development productivity model for MIS environments"
• Evidence based on the paper "An empirical study of software productivity"
• Evidence based on the paper "Software development productivity of European space, military, and industrial applications"
• Evidence based on the paper "Impact of personnel factors on the recovery of delayed software projects: A system dynamics approach"
• Evidence based on the paper "Agile software development: Impact on productivity and quality"
• Evidence based on the paper "Empirical findings on team size and productivity in software development"
• Result

Research question

The aggregated evidence refers to the research question about which factors have been used to define/compose/describe software productivity in prediction and measurement methods.

Team Size affecting Software productivity

The purpose of this synthesis is to characterize the effect of Team Size in Software Development on Software Productivity from the point of view of SE researchers in the context of factors described/identified on productivity prediction and measurement methods. This aggregated evidence shows that Team Size has a negative or weakly negative effect on software productivity (belief =56%).