Metrics and models for developer collaboration analysis in microservice-based systems. A systematic mapping study

Abstract

Microservices enable different teams to develop and deploy services independently. Practitioners are frequently mentioning the need for independence between teams and developers, and the need for metrics to measure developer collaboration. To shed light on the existing metrics and models, we conducted a Systematic Mapping Study to identify models for measuring the development activities, the metrics adopted by these methods, and the output produced by the methods themselves. We identified 10 different models proposed in 14 research papers. Results show that a large amount of the existing models adopt qualitative metrics, questionnaires, and surveys to collect the information required while others use information from issue tracking and version systems. The results will enable practitioners and researchers to further validate and extend the research on metrics for evaluating the collaboration and independence among developers. © 2021 Copyright for this paper by its authors.