  Background: Multitasking is usual in software development. It is the ability
to stop working on a task, switch to another, and return eventually to the
first one, as needed or as scheduled. Multitasking, however, comes at a
cognitive cost: frequent context-switches can lead to distraction, sub-standard
work, and even greater stress. Aims: This paper reports a replication
experiment where we gathered data on a group of developers from a software
development company from industry on a large collection of projects stored in
GitLab repositories. Method: We reused the developed models and methods from
the original study for measuring the rate and breadth of a developers'
context-switching behavior, and we study how context-switching affects their
productivity. We applied semi-structured interviews, replacing the original
survey, to some of the developers to understand the reasons for and perceptions
of multitasking. Results: We found out that industry developers multitask as
much as OSS developers focusing more (on fewer projects), and working more
repetitively from one day to the next is associated with higher productivity,
but there is no effect for higher multitasking. Some commons reasons make them
multitask: dependencies, personal interests, and social relationships.
Conclusions: Short context change, less than three minutes, did not impact
results from industry developers; however, more than that, it brings a feeling
of left the previous tasks behind. So, it is proportional to how much context
is switched: as bigger the context and bigger the interruption, it is worst to
come back.
