A recent article, published in Nature Communications, examines the role of leaders in teams of open source software. The study, conducted by Johannes Wachs and Luca Gallo from ANETI Lab, with researchers from the Central European University, shows that leaders play crucial roles in open source software development: they are the most active contributors, they interact with most team members, and they even have distinct patterns of when and how frequently they make contributions. The more active these leaders are in their teams, the better the outcome.

Some projects experience a change of lead developer: a different team member becomes the most active and central in the project, replacing the old leader. The study demonstrates that these leadership changes are crucial, because they are signals of a long run project success.

Building on recent findings showing that social and coordination skills are increasingly valuable on the labor market, the article suggests that these talents are important because they help strong leaders realize specific visions. It also highlights that projects with too-flat hierarchies will be less successful, contributing to the ongoing discourse of how changes in team composition affect team outcome.