Software Público Brasileiro

\section{Results}
\label{sec:results}

The case study had two phases according to the project management model. In the
second phase (about one year of execution), several practices have been applied
to harmonize the cultural and organizational divergences of the institutions
involved.  At the end of the project, an empirical model of management and
development process was stabilized by aligning experiences from the open source
ecosystem, academic research, and bureaucracies needed by the government. In
this section, we present by context the practices adopted in this second phase
and show the benefits generated by its deployment.

\subsection{Project management and communication on the developing platform
itself}

After nine months of project activities, the first version of new SPB Portal
was released. From this point, we started to migrate the management and
communication interactions to the platform under development. In short, Wiki
feature was used for meeting logging, defining goals, sprint planning, and
documentation of deployment processes and administration resources guide. Issue
tracker was used for discussing requirements, monitoring the features under
development, registering changes, and validating functionalities delivered.
Finally, the whole team used the Mailing list to defining schedules of meetings and
deliveries and also to the collaborative definition of requirements.

Our surveys report Mailing list (100\%) and Issue Tracker (62.5\%) as the main
means of interaction between senior developers and undergraduates. Developers
and MPOG staff also interacted mostly via Mailing List (87.5\%) and Issue
tracker (50\%).  According to research findings, this movement made
\textbf{communication more transparent and efficient}. An MPOG IT analyst said
that the \textit{``Communicating well goes far beyond the speed, it is someone
being able to communicate to everyone everything that is happening in the
project. We did not use emails. We use more mailing list and avoid e-mails. It
helped a lot because everything was public and did not pollute our mailbox. You
wanted to know something, could go there and look at what was happening''}.

Migrating to SPB platform also provided an \textbf{easier monitoring and
increase interactions between the development team and public servants by
coordinators}. As shown by collected data, in the last 15 months of the
project, the issues have 59 different authors (8 from MPOG staff) and
commented by 64 different users (9 from MPOG staff and users).  Considering
issues with a higher level of interaction those that have 10 or more comments, in
a set of 102 issues, MPOG staff authored 43 issues (which represents 42\% of
these most active issues). An MPOG analyst highlighted that \textit{``there was
a lot of evolution, a lot of communication via Gitlab''}.  This interaction
also led MPOG staff to \textbf{trust developed code}: \textit{``Everything was
validated, we tested the features and we developed the project inside the
platform so that the feature was validated in the development of the software
itself. From the moment we installed it and began to use it for development,
this validation was constant. We felt confident in the features''}.

One of the main concerns of traditional approaches is meticulous documentation of
the software designed and the development steps. With this aforementioned
decision, we could meet this government demand without bureaucracies and
changes in our development process, \textbf{producting organically
documentation and records} in the platform itself, as one of the MPOG response
evidenced: \textit{``For me, it was a lot of learning. There is a lot of things
documented in the e-mails and also in the portal itself. At any moment we can
go there and see how it worked, how someone did something. We can recover those
good points''}.

\subsection{Bringing together government staff and development team}

The MPOG analysts observed communication noise in the dialogue between them and
their superiors and in dialogues with the development team,
intermediated by the superiors. They said that direct dialogue with the
development team and biweekly visits to the university's lab  \textbf{reduce
communication misunderstood}: \textit{``At this point, the communication
started to change.. started to improve''}. According to another interviewee,
this new dynamic unified the two sides: \textit{``I believe it was very
positive, we also liked to go there, to interact with the team. I think it
brought more unity, more integration into the project''}. The participation of
the MPOG staff was also considered positive by {72.9\%} of the undergraduates
and to {81.1\%} of them think the presence of MPOG staff in sprint ceremonies
was important for the development. In addition, to \textbf{better meet
expectations of both sides} regarding the requirements developed, {75.6\%} of
students believe that writing the requirements together with the MPOG staff was
very important. According to one of them \textit{``Joint planning and timely
meetings were very important for understanding the needs of MPOG''}.

An imported consequence of this direct government-academia interaction in the
laboratory was empathy, as reported by one of the interviewees \textit{``You
know people in person and it makes such a big difference because it causes
empathy.  You already know who that person is, it's not just a name''}. This
subjectively helped to \textbf{align both activities execution pace},
\textit{``When we went there, we knew the people and we realized that, on our
side, we also felt more encouraged to validate faster and give faster feedback
to the teams [..] We gave this feedback fast and they also gave quick feedback
for any our questions''}. The teams' synchronization was reinforced with the
implementation of a Continuous Delivery pipeline. The benefits of this approach
were presented in our previous work \cite{siqueira2018cd} and corroborate these
research results. To 81.1\% of students and 75\% of senior developers,
deploying new versions of the SPB portal in production was a motivator during
the project.

One of the MPOG analyst interviewed also noted these releases also helped to
\textbf{overcome the government bias regarding the low productivity of
collaborative projects with academia}: \textit{``At first, the government staff
had a bias that universities do not deliver. We overcame that bias in the
course of the project.  We deliver a lot and with quality. Today, I think if we
had paid the same amount for a company, it would not have done what was
delivered and with the quality that was delivered with the price that was
paid''}. Additionally, the deployment in production of each new version also
\textbf{improve the translation of the process from one side to the other}, as
mentioned by MPOG analyst \textit{``We had an overview at the strategic level.
When we went down to the technical level, plan the release every four months
was difficult. But in the end, I think this has not been a problem. A project
you are delivering, the results are going to production, the code is quality,
the team is qualified/capable and the project is doing well, it does not impact
as much in practice''}.

\subsection{Split development team into priority work fronts with IT professionals}

Four teams were formed to dedicated to the main development demands of the
portal: UX, DevOps, System-of-Systems, and Social Networking. External
developers with vast experience in the SPB platform software components and
professionals with experience in front-end and UX were hired. These
professionals also contributed to disseminate practices adopted in the industry
and in the free software communities to other project members. {87.5\%} of
seniors agreed with our project development process. For 62.5\% this process
has a good similarity to their previous experiences. Their experience
\textbf{helped to reconcile development processes and decision making}, as
stated by one of the respondent developers \textit{``I think my main
contribution was to have balanced the relations between the MPOG staff and the
UnB team''}. {62.5\%} of senior developers believe they have collaborated in
the relationship between the management and development processes of the two
institutions and {62.5\%} asserted that helped MPOG staff to more clearly
express their requests. {62.5\%} of them did not understand MPOG's project
management process and {50\%} believe their project productivity was affected
by MPOG's project management process. For the government, these professionals
gave credibility to the development \textit{``You had the reviewers, who were
the original developers of the software, that gave you confidence and
confidence in the code''}.

In addition, with these professionals was possible to \textbf{transferred
knowledge of industry and free software to government and academia}. Working
with senior developers was important for all interns during the project. {91\%}
of them also believe that working with professionals was important for
learning. {75\%} of senior developers believe that 'Working in pairs with a
senior' and 62.5\% that 'Participate in joint review tasks' were the tasks with
the involvement of them that most contributed to the evolution of students in
the project. And, in guiding a students, {75\%} believe that this knowledge was
widespread among the others in the team. This acquisition of knowledge was also
noted by the government, which stated \textit{``On the side of UnB, what we
perceived was that the project was very big leap when the original software
developers were hired in the case of Noosfero and Colab, because they had a
guide on how to develop things in the best way and were able to solve
non-trivial problems and quickly''}.

The fronts also gained more autonomy to manage their activities. The role of
``meta-coach'' was defined among the students, to coordinate the interactions
between teams and coach to coordinate each front. Coaches have become a
\textbf{point of reference for the development process}. {89.1\%} of students
said that the presence of the coach was essential to the running of sprint, and
for {87.5\%} of senior developers coaches was essential for their interaction
with the team.  MPOG analysts saw coaches as facilitators for their activities
and for communication with the development team. One of the interviewees said
\textit{``I interacted more with the project coordinator and team coaches''},
\textit{``The reason for this was that the coaches were more likely to meet the
requirements, to ask questions about requirements, to understand some features.
interaction with leaders than with senior developers. Sometimes the coaches
brought the question to the senior developers''}.