The Role of Mentoring and Project Characteristics for Onboarding in Open Source Software Projects

Context: Onboarding is a process that helps newcomers become integrated members of their organisation. Successful onboarding programs can result in increased performance in conventional or-ganisations, but there is little guidance on how to onboard new developers in Open Source Software (OSS) projects. Goal: In this study, we examine how mentoring and project characteristics in-fluence the e↵ectiveness and eciency of the onboarding process. We study a collaboration program involving a total of nine Open Source Software projects and more than 120 students from di↵erent universities around the world as part of Facebook’s Education Mod-ernization Program. Method: We use quantitative measurements of source code repositories, issue tracking systems, and discussion fora to examine how newcomers become contributing members of their OSS projects. Results: We found that developers receiving deliber