Computing degree-of-knowledge values for a developer's workspace

Previous research in computer science shows that software developers are typically deluged by an enormous volume of information daily. Improving the effectiveness of developers to filter this information may yield significant productivity improvements. To combat this overload, we introduce an indicator, called degree-of-knowledge (DOK), which is a real value indicating how much knowledge a developer has with a source code element. A developer’s DOK values for a source code base can be computed automatically from authorship data mined from the source revision systems and from interaction data collected as the developer works. This indicator may help reduce information overload by, for instance, filtering the source code to only show the elements for which a developer has high knowledge. We describe our implementation of an efficient framework for computing DOK values in a development environment.

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