Designing task visualizations to support the coordination of work in software development

Abstract

Software development tools primarily focus on supporting the technical work. Yet no matter the tools employed, the process followed, or the size of the team, important aspects of development are non-technical, and largely unsupported. For example, increasing distribution of development teams highlights the issues of coordination and cooperation. This paper focuses on one area: managing change requests. Interviews with industry and open-source programmers were used to create designs for the visual inspection of change requests. This paper presents fieldwork findings and two designs. We conclude by reflecting on the issues that task visualizations that support social inferences address in software development. Copyright 2006 ACM.