Ownership and Accountability in Software Teams

Ownership of software artifacts has become a point of interest to software teams. Researchers modeled ownership of software artifacts with different models and in relationship with a variety of code and developers’ performance metrics. These models have been evaluated for both propriety and open-source software. Bightsquid is a software startup that provides a healthcare communication system. At the time of the COVID-19 pandemic (starting March 2020), the company actively modified its processes to improve developers’ experience and accountability. As the provider of health communications, Brighsquid was receiving an amplified number of user requests to accommodate the changing needs in the health care system. Yet, the management team observed the lack of accountability among the developers in accepting and finalizing these requests. The company changes the task assignment process to the team with the main motivation to increase developers’ accountability.

Motivated by this problem statement and the status of the partnered company, this thesis presents four main contributions: a systematic literature review on software ownership, a case study with Brighsquid to compare their ownership status with existing research, an evaluation of the impact of enhanced accountability through a comparative analysis of issue assignment models, and a survey of software developers to explore the broader relationship between accountability and ownership.