Investigating Transparency in Software Ecosystems Portals from the Point of View of Developer Experience

Web portals play an important role within a software ecosystem (SECO), as they facilitate access to information and interaction between third-party developers to its common technological platform. One of the factors that engage third-party developers in a SECO is directly related to their developer experience (DX) on its portals. However, software developers have mentioned difficulties in accessing, using, and understanding the information provided by keystones (i.e., central organizations) on their SECO portals. This situation is related to the lack of transparency of SECO portals. Such problem contributes to increased barriers to entry for SECO and a cumbersome start for newcomer third-party developers. It affects the DX, which can lead to a lack of engagement among developers on the platform. In this context, this research aims to investigate the relationship between DX and transparency to develop a framework (T-SECOP) integrated into a set of guidelines for improving transparency in SECO portals from a DX perspective. Under the aegis of the Design Science Research (DSR) method, our research method is comprised of three phases: characterization, development, and evaluation. As a contribution, we intend to offer a framework with a set of artifacts to support researchers, from universities and research institutes, and designers and managers from organizations within SECO in diagnosing problems related to transparency in their portals and obtaining suggestions for actions to minimize these problems.