Familiarity, complexity, and team performance in geographically distributed software development
Abstract
While prior research has found that familiarity is beneficial to team performance, it is not clear whether different kinds of familiarity are more or less beneficial when the work has different types of complexity. In this paper, we theorize how task and team familiarity interact with task and team coordination complexity to influence team performance. We posit that task familiarity is more beneficial with more complex tasks (i.e., tasks that are larger or with more complex structures) and that team familiarity is more beneficial when team coordination is more difficult (i.e., for larger or geographically dispersed teams). Finally, we propose that the effects of task familiarity and team familiarity on team performance are complementary. Based on a field study of geographically distributed software teams, two of our hypotheses are disconfirmed: Our results show that the beneficial effects of task familiarity decline when tasks are more structurally complex and are independent of task size. Conversely, the hypotheses for team familiarity are confirmed as the benefit of team familiarity for team performance is enhanced when team coordination is more challenging—i.e., when teams are larger or geographically dispersed. Finally, surprisingly, we find that task and team familiarity are more substitutive than complementary in their joint effects on team performance: Task familiarity improves team performance more strongly when team familiarity is weak and vice versa. Our study contr…
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Core and peripheral developers may differ in their expected benefits from OSS contribution and in their level of familiarity with a focal project.
“these developers may differ in their expected benefits from OSS contribution and in the level of familiarity with a focal project (Espinosa et al. 2007).”
From The Impact of Generative AI on Collaborative Open-Source Software Development: Evidence from GitHub Copilot  (2024) · cites this paper as Espinosa et al. 2007
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- Authors
- Espinosa, J. A., Slaughter, S. A., Kraut, R. E., & Herbsleb, J. D.
- Affiliations
- American University (US)
- Georgia Institute of Technology (US)
- Carnegie Mellon University (US)
- Venue
- Organization Science
- Published
- 2007-08
- Volume
- 18
- Issue
- 4
- Pages
- 613-630
- ISSN
- 1047-7039 (ISSN-L)
- 1526-5455
- OpenAlex
- W2112389050
- Cited by
- 420
- References
- 6
- Citations by year
- 2026: 14 · 2025: 20 · 2024: 17 · 2023: 17 · 2022: 27 · 2021: 25 · 2020: 27 · 2019: 16 · 2018: 28 · 2017: 27 · 2016: 23 · 2015: 23 · 2014: 38 · 2013: 24 · 2012: 23
- FWCI
- 20.67
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Organization Science (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Team Dynamics and Performance
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Information Systems › Software Engineering Techniques and Practices
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Computer Science Applications › Open Source Software Innovations
- Keywords
- task familiarity, team familiarity, team performance, geographically dispersed teams, software development teams, task complexity, task size, structural complexity, team size
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