Keynote: Analysing Contributions

How do you improve the behavior of a software team? There will always be team members who are great at quickly producing a new prototype, and others who do a great job of carefully implementing a rock-solid library around a set of new data structures. By analyzing every single contribution of every individual over a long period of time, we can start to understand such differences in coding style. Individuals get suggestions on how to improve their own style, and team leaders can build on everyone’s strength to maximize productivity.

Semmle’s business intelligence product enables this type of detailed analysis of version history, source code, issue tickets, test results and so forth. I will discuss how the technical challenges were overcome, and also the organizational implications.