Refactoring Community Smells: An Empirical Study on the Software Practitioners of Bangladesh

Community smells are organizational and social anti-patterns in the development community that need to be refactored. In the literature, studies on community smell refactoring are found from the very conceptual level. However, little is known about the practitioners’ perceptions, refactoring readiness and the refactoring strategies adopted in local software communities. This paper bridge this gap by exploring these issues in the software industry of Bangladesh. A depth interview-based study was conducted on local software practitioners chosen through a convenience sample recruitment strategy. Interviews were transcribed and analyzed using Straussian Grounded Theory. We collected data on the four prominent smells according to literature and introduced a new measure called ‘Refactoring Readiness’ to calculate the community smell refactoring preparedness of a software development community. Analyzing the data, it is seen that 85% local practitioners perceive community smells as harmful but less than half take step to mitigate those smells. We identified the refactoring strategies (e.g. creating a structured communication plan, mentoring) currently adopted by them and found that the Refactoring Readiness of the software industry of Bangladesh is 0.63 on a scale of 0-1. This provides evidence that more work needs to be done for refactoring community smells from the local sub-optimal development communities.