DNDS Research Featured in Nature Communications
We are delighted to announce that the article “The dynamics of leadership and success in software development teams” by Lorenzo Betti and Federico Battiston, in collaboration with former DNDS members Luca Gallo and Johannes Wachs, has been selected for the Editors’ Highlights in Nature Communications.
The paper explores how collaborative processes and leadership dynamics influence the success of software development teams. Using fine-grained temporal data from three major software ecosystems—Rust, JavaScript, and Python—the authors investigate how work is distributed among team members and how leadership evolves over time. They find that:
- Workload is typically unevenly distributed, and teams with stronger heterogeneity tend to be more successful.
- A lead developer often emerges early, contributing the majority of the work.
- Leadership transitions are common, especially in projects initially led by inexperienced users.
- These transitions are associated with increased growth in project success.
By shedding light on the evolving structure of teams and the role of leadership, the study provides important insights into the dynamics of online collaboration and innovation.
Read the Editors’ Highlights collection:
https://www.nature.com/collections/hjhbgijcei
Read the full paper:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-59031-7
Congratulations to the team on this well-deserved recognition!