Software Público Brasileiro

\section{Research Design}
\label{sec:researchdesign}

The focus of this paper is investigating practical ways to conciliate cultural
differences in software development processes between government and academia,
without modifying their internal processes. Our analysis was guided by the
following research questions:

\textbf{RQ1.}\textit{How to introduce open source and agile best practices into
government-academia collaboration project?}

\textbf{RQ2.}\textit{What practices would favor effective team management in
government-academia collaborative project?}

To answer these questions, we use as a case study the evolution project of the
SPB portal \cite{meirelles2017spb}, a government-academia collaborative
development based on open source software integration. We designed two surveys
and an interview to the different roles performed by the project
participants and we collected public data from the project development
environment. Our research approach is detailed in the following subsections.

\subsection{The case study}

%TODO:
%Apresentar melhor a SPB plataforma aqui para preparar a discussão dos resultados (usar modelo IEEE Software)

%TODO por parágrafo
%five existing open source software (substitutir software por systems)
%systems-of-sytems software (Colab) (substitutir software por framework)

The project to evolve the Brazilian Public Software Portal was a partnership
between government and academia held between 2014 and 2016
\cite{meirelles2017spb}. To solve maintenance problems and fill design-reality
gaps in the portal, the Ministry of Planning (MPOG) joined the University of
Brasília (UnB) and the University of São Paulo (USP) to develop a platform
based on the integration and evolution of five existing open source
software. This environment was a novelty in the context of the Brazilian
government, due to the technologies employed and its diverse features,
including social networking (Noosfero), mailing lists (MailMan), version
control system (GitLab), and source code quality monitoring (Mezuro), all
integrated using a system-of-systems software (Colab) \cite{meirelles2017spb}.

%Não usar empirical practices => best practices
%undergraduate students => undergraduate interns
%Colocar no discurso direto: The project hired 6 IT profectionals, and 2 designers.

The academic team carried out development activities in the Advanced Laboratory
of Production, Research and Innovation in Software Engineering (LAPPIS) at UnB.
The project management and development process in this laboratory are usually
executed adopting empirical practices from open source communities and agile
methodologies. For this project, a total of 42 undergraduate students and two
professors participated in the development team. Six IT professionals were also
hired as senior developers due to their experiences in open source projects and
two designers specialized in User eXperience. 

%(Melhorar a frase) Although they were responsible... Sugestão de sequência: theses government servants did not develop software. Their responsability was contracting...

The government team was composed of one director, one coordinator, and two IT
analysts from MPOG. Although they were responsible for the
execution of this collaboration, their department generally does not execute
development of ministry's software projects, since its responsibility is
contracting and homologating software development services, following
traditional management approaches, such as the RUP, CMMI, and PMBOK.

%Met in person to manage... 
%To improve the project management process we have adopted and evolute a set of empirical practices based on open source ecosystems and agile methodologies, establishing an empirical management model.
%Melhorar frase como um todo tirando o 'we' (diferenciar autor (we) do coordenador do projeto): To improve the project management process we have adopted and evolved a set of empirical practices based on open source ecosystems and agile methodologies, establishing an empirical management model. 
%Sugestão de conteúdo para finalizar a última frase
%"Ao longo do projeto, os seus responsáveis foram experimentando e testando práticas coletadas do OSS de forma intuitiva e não-sistemática. Neste paper tentamos analisar e sistematizar essas melhores práticas."
The leaders of these two aforementioned teams periodically met in person for
the purpose of managing the project progress, discussing strategic and
technical goals. Initially, these meetings took place at the ministry's
headquarters and, usually, only directors and professors participated. The
management of the development team was concentrated in the academic side and
was organized in biweekly sprints and 4-month releases. With the progress of
the project, this workflow proved to be inefficient. Conflicts between the
internal management processes and differences in pace and goals of each
institution were compromising the platform development. To improve the project
management process we have adopted and evolute a set of empirical practices
based on open source ecosystems and agile methodologies, establishing an empirical
management model.

\subsection{Survey and data collection}

%UnB undergraduate interns
%Online questionnaire (Não usar survey, usar sempre questionnaire)
%We also interviewed 
%The questions are classified into categories
%tirar "in the context of government and project;"

We divided the UnB development team into two groups of target participants
according to their roles during the project: \textit{UnB Interns} and
\textit{Senior Developers}. For each group, we designed an online survey with
topics related to project organization, development process, communication and
relationship between members, acquired knowledge, and experience with open
source projects. We interviewed also two \textit{MPOG analysts} who directly
interacted with the development team and project development process. The
interview questions could be classified into four parts: Professional profile;
Organization, communication and development methodologies in the context of
government and project; Satisfaction with the developed platform; Lessons
learned.

%UnB interns (undergraduate students) => interns
%their average age [in september 2017] are...
%arredondar as casas das porcentagem, nada depois da virgula 43,2% => 43%
%falar as porcentagens sobre a profissão de todos inclusive teacher and public servants
%link to online questionnaire throught e-mail

We sent the link to the online survey through emails to 42 UnB interns
(undergraduate students), who participated in any time of the project as
developer receiving a scholarship. We received a total of 37 responses. Their
average age is 25 years old and 91.9\% of them are male. Currently, 35.1\%
continue at the university as undergraduate or graduate students, 18.9\% work as
a developer in a small company and 18.9\% in medium or large companies, 10.8\%
are entrepreneurs, 8.1\% are unemployed and the others work as teachers or
civil servants. 43.2\% said the SPB project was their first experience with
open source software.

%We also invited the 8 seniors developers to filling the oline questionnaire and all of them did.
%They average age are

We also sent the link to the online survey through emails to eight senior
developers (IT professionals). All of them answered the questionnaire.
Their average age is 32 years old and 87.5\% are male. They have an average of
11 years of experience in the IT market, and currently, 62.5\% of respondents
are company employees, 37.5\% are freelance developers, 25\% are master's
degree students and 25\% entrepreneurs. They have worked on average in 5
companies and participated in 4 to 80 projects. They participated in this
collaborative project between 7 to 24 months. 85.7\% of them had some
experience with free software before the SPB project.


Two MPOG IT analysts were interviewed separately.  Each interview took an
average of 2 hours with 28 open questions. They are more than 30 years old and
have been government employees for more than 7 years.  Only one of them
continues working in the same ministry. For both, this collaborative project
was their first experience of government-academia development collaboration.

%We collected from the repository manager all open issues and commits.
%We collected from the main project repository all the issues and commits.
%The number of comment authors
%In the main project repository

Finally, we quantitatively analyze data about the development of the project,
publicly available on the SPB platform. We collected from the repository
manager tool of the platform all open issues and commits related to the main
repository of the platform, that is, the development repositories of the
integrated software were not considered.  For issues, we collected project
name, author of the issue, opening date, issue title, and the number of comments.
We also collected information about total open issues, the total commits,
different authors of issues, the number of different authors of issues, the number of
comments, authors of comments, the number of authors other than comments.  During
the period from April 2015 to June 2016, 879 issues were opened by 59 distinct
authors with a total of 4,658 comments and 64 distinct commentators. The
development team made 3,256 commits in the repository provided by SPB platform.