Practice and perception of team code ownership

Context: Team code ownership is a software development practice where any team member can modify any part of the team's code. However, many factors beyond official policy affect a developer's sense of ownership. Objective: The purpose of this paper is to understand the factors that affect a team's sense of code ownership. Method: Following Constructivist Grounded Theory, the first author conducted participant-observation of several software development projects, and interviewed 21 software engineers, interaction designers, and product managers. Iterating between theoretical sampling and analysis continued until achieving theoretical saturation. Results: Team code ownership is a feeling. Developers feel team code ownership more when they understand the system context, have contributed to the code in question, perceive code quality as high, believe the product will satisfy the user needs, and perceive high team cohesion. Limitations: Outcomes of grounded theory research are not statistically generalizable to defined populations, and may not apply to organizations with different software development cultures. Conclusion: Team code ownership is rooted in numerous cognitive, emotional, contextual and technical factors and cannot be achieved simply by policy.

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