  From science to industry, teamwork plays a crucial role in knowledge
production and innovation. Most studies consider teams as static groups of
individuals, thereby failing to capture how the micro-dynamics of collaborative
processes and organizational changes determine team success. Here, we leverage
fine-grained temporal data on software development teams to gain insights into
the dynamics of online collaborative projects. Our analysis reveals an uneven
workload distribution in teams, with stronger heterogeneity correlated with
higher success, and the early emergence of a lead developer carrying out the
majority of work. Moreover, we find that a sizeable fraction of projects
experience a change of lead developer, with such a transition being more likely
in projects led by inexperienced users. Finally, we show that leadership change
is associated with faster success growth, in particular for the least
successful projects. Our work contributes to a deeper understanding of the link
between team evolution and success in collaborative processes.
