Exploiting the Relationship between Software Dependencies and Coordination through Visualization
Cleidson R. B. de Souza, Erik H. Trainer, Stephen Quirk, David Redmiles, Donald Bren · 2008
Large software development projects require management of dependencies by managers and developers to ensure the smooth coordination of work. Based on theoretical predictions and empirical observations (ours and from others) that dependencies between software components create dependencies between the developers implementing those components, we created Ariadne, a visualization tool designed as a plug-in for Eclipse. Ariadne aims to explore this socio-technical relationship by translating technical dependencies into dependencies among software developers presented in a social network graph. Here, we describe a revised visualization that preserves the ease of identifying connections found in social network graphs but also facilitates efficient identification of dependency information needed to coordinate developers ’ work. We have evaluated the visualization using multiple inspection methods appropriate for visual interfaces. The results of our evaluation indicate significant improvements over the graph-based approach and suggest important avenues for future work.