Interactive Exploration of Collaborative Software-Development Data

Modern collaborative software-development tools generate a rich data record, over the lifecycle of the project, which can be analyzed to provide team members and managers with insights into the performance and contributions of individual members and the overall team dynamic. This data can be analyzed from different perspectives, sliced and diced across different dimensions, and visualized in different ways. Frequently the most useful analysis depends on the actual data, which makes the design of single authoritative visualization a challenge. In this paper we describe an analysis and visualization tool that supports the flexible run-time mapping of such a data record to a number of alternative visualizations. We have used our framework to analyze and gain an understanding of how individuals work within their teams and how teams differ in their work on these term projects.