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Impacts of Process Automation on Software Development and the IT Workforce

Year: 2025

Type: article

Abstract: The rising complexity of software development environments has underscored the need for consistent, automated solutions. Container technology—lightweight virtualization that packages software and dependencies—has emerged as a key enabler of process automation. This study investigates the effects of container technology adoption on organizational productivity and the IT workforce using a large-scale panel dataset of GitHub-based metrics from over 21,000 organizations. Leveraging a Difference-in-Differences (DID) approach with propensity score matching, we empirically assess the impact of containerization. Our results reveal significant post-adoption increases in both organizational productivity and IT workforce size, suggesting that containers not only enhance individual developer efficacy but also reduce collaboration costs in team-based environments. These findings offer theoretical and practical insights into how automation tools like containers reshape software development workflows and scale collaborative efforts.

Source: Journal of the Association for Information Systems

Authors: Liu, Yutong, Hashim, Matthew J., Chen, Wei, Raza, Taqi

Institutions: University of Arizona, University of Connecticut, University of Massachusetts Amherst

Language: English

Topic: Software Engineering Techniques and Practices

Subfield: Information Systems

Field: Computer Science

Domain: Physical Sciences

SDGs: Decent work and economic growth, Industry, innovation and infrastructure

Open Access status: green

OpenAlex ID: W6982377482

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