Visualizing the workflow of developers

Developers use the Integrated Development Environment (IDE) to develop a system at hand, by reading, understanding, and writing its source code. They do so by exploiting the tools and facilities provided by the IDE. This also allows them to build a mental model of the system to perform informed changes. It is however not clear how and when developers use which facility and tool, and to what extent the current services offered by the IDE appropriately support the navigation. We present an approach to visualize the activities of developers within the IDE, implemented in a tool: DFLow. DFLOW records all IDE interactions that occur during a development session and visualizes them through a web-based visualization platform.