The widespread adoption of microservice architectures has introduced new challenges in aligning software modularity with the structure of development organizations. Although prior research has extensively examined technical properties such as service coupling and dependency structures, comparatively little attention has been paid to how contributor activity reflects or diverges from service boundaries. In this paper, we introduce the notion of organizational cohesion in microservice ecosystems and propose a quantitative approach to measure it. Building on the Sensitive Class Cohesion Metric (SCOM), we define Pairwise Team Cohesion (PTC), a metric that captures the balance and focus of developer contributions within individual microservices. We analyze the evolution of organizational cohesion using a longitudinal case study of the Spinnaker microservice platform and replicate the analysis across six additional open-source microservice systems. Our results reveal systematic differences between core and peripheral services and show that PTC and Average Organizational Coupling (AOC) exhibit only a weak correlation across projects. This finding shows that team cohesion and cross-service developer activity suggest distinct and weakly associated organizational dynamics. By extending the "high cohesion, low coupling" principle to the organizational level, our study provides a quantitative perspective for assessing the socio-technical structure of microservice development.

翻译：微服务架构的广泛采用在使软件模块化与开发组织结构保持一致方面带来了新挑战。尽管先前研究已广泛考察了服务耦合和依赖结构等技术属性，但相对较少关注贡献者活动如何反映或偏离服务边界。本文提出微服务生态系统中组织内聚力的概念，并引入一种量化测量方法。基于敏感类内聚力度量法（SCOM），我们定义了成对团队内聚力（PTC），该度量指标可捕捉单个微服务中开发者贡献的平衡性与集中度。我们通过Spinnaker微服务平台纵向案例研究分析组织内聚力的演化，并在另外六个开源微服务系统中重复该分析。研究结果揭示了核心服务与边缘服务之间的系统性差异，并表明PTC与平均组织耦合度（AOC）跨项目仅呈现弱相关性。这一发现表明，团队内聚力和跨服务开发者活动体现了相互区别且弱关联的组织动态。通过将“高内聚、低耦合”原则延伸至组织层面，本研究为评估微服务开发的社会技术结构提供了量化视角。