Crowston, Howison, Annabi - 2006

[GeorgLink]

Crowston, K., Howison, J., & Annabi, H. (2006). Information systems success in free and open source software development: theory and measures. Software Process: Improvement and Practice, 11(2), 123–148. https://doi.org/10.1002/spip.259

[GeorgLink]

Great article, always worth going back to.

The authors reviewed IS success literature and determined that the success factors (measures) in are determined by the organizational context of IS, which is not applicable to FOSS. Whereas IS success measures are outcome-oriented (e.g. market share, user satisfaction, code quality), the FOSS success factors more up the process of software development (developers are uses, developers are interested in process, developers have to be satisfied). Then the authors asked open source developers what metrics they look at and out came seven broad categories of metrics: User, Product, Process, Developers, Use, Recognition, and Influence. When looking at FOSS research and how it viewed FOSS success, four types emerged: system creation (process), system quality (product), system use (use), and system consequences (users and developers). Table 5 is the summary of concepts for IS success in FLOSS organized by process phase.

The advantage of the model is grouping of metrics into the process phases, thus indicating when metrics are most appropriately used. This grouping can also be indicative of the types of actions that can be informed by metrics. For example, metrics in the 'system creation and maintenance' phase may inform actions that impact governance, processes, tools, and developer interactions.