When development teams are in the same room, it is not surprising to see diagrams being used – if only being shared via sketches made on pads, or through the use of whiteboards. Interestingly, despite the fact that OSS teams are distributed geographically, diagrams also play an important role in OSS development.

There was a helpful research done by Koji Yatani et al. at University of Toronto and Oregon State University. They studied developers on the Ubuntu project and found that developers create and distribute digitalized diagrams as opposed to physical sketches. While the uses of diagrams are specific to the Ubuntu projects, there are definitely lessons that we can learn to apply in other OSS projects to ensure successful development.

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“Diagrams?”

Yes, diagrams. All of us use diagrams in one way or another. Mostly, diagrams are used to enhance communication and to illustrate what exactly one is talking about.

“But that’s it. Diagrams are sketches which are meant to be thrown away without deserving a second look.”

Now that’s where you’re wrong. In fact, diagrams are more useful than they appear to be. Yes, diagrams often become outdated fast in the software development industry and that tends to lead to people having a biased view against them. They often quickly assume diagrams are useless.
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What exactly makes a codebase easy to understand; the documentation or the tools that you use? In our effort to help developers who are working with large codebases, we conducted a survey (see details and highlights) to find out what techniques developers use to better understand code.
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