Non-invasive Investigation of the Software Process in Open Source Projects

Open Source and Agile (eXtreme Programming, in particular) projects have several commonalities such as focus on the value for the user, continuous feedback, high level of communication, etc. Moreover, both approaches present difficulties in keeping track of the status of the development, verifying the quality of the production process, identifying best practices, etc. Such difficulties are related to the lack of a formal activity for the collection of data regarding the development process. However, the introduction of such an activity is not compatible with the basic principles of both approaches: focus on source code. For these reasons, the automated collection of data from source code repositories can help to provide a way to monitor the development process.