Introducing software engineering innovations in open source projects

The growing importance of the Open Source development paradigm for industry and public institutions leads to the question of how the efficiency and productivity of projects under this paradigm can be improved. The notable difference to a process improvement effort in an industrial setting (for instance using the CMMI), is the collaborative nature of the project: the absence of hierarchical power makes it impossible to drive change in a top-down fashion. This on-going Ph.D. thesis seeks to provide a thorough understanding of the mechanisms for introducing tool and process improvements into OSS projects from the perspective of the individual stakeholders to increase the success chances of their improvement efforts.