Following the Sun: Temporal dispersion and performance in open source software project teams

Abstract

Dispersion in working teams has been addressed by extant research mostly in terms of the physical distance that separates team members. Recently, the focus has shifted toward an examination of a newer construct -temporal dispersion (TD). The study of TD so far has been constrained mostly to conceptual work. This study furthers the understanding of TD through an empirical investigation of its relationship with open source software (OSS) team performance. In this paper, hypotheses are developed based on coordination theory, and analyses are performed using data collected from multiple archival sources comprising 100 OSS development teams. Results indicate that TD positively affects development speed and quality and that software complexity moderates the relation between TD and software quality. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.