Synchronised Visualisation of Software Process and Product Artefacts: Concept, Design and Prototype Implementation

TL;DR

This paper introduces Conceptual Visualisation, a novel approach that synchronizes software process and product artefacts in a visual environment, enhancing traceability and understanding for developers and managers.

Contribution

It presents a new SV approach based on the CodeCity metaphor that links code artefacts with development processes, integrating design concepts and developer intentions.

Findings

Prototype tool ScrumCity demonstrates the approach on real-world systems.

Preliminary case study shows promising results in exploring software artefacts.

Enables synchronized visualization of process and product for better traceability.

Abstract

Context: Most prior software visualisation (SV) research has focused primarily on making aspects of intangible software product artefacts more evident. While undoubtedly useful, this focus has meant that software process visualisation has received far less attention. Objective: This paper presents Conceptual Visualisation, a novel SV approach that builds on the well-known CodeCity metaphor by situating software code artefacts alongside their software development processes, in order to link and synchronise these typically separate components. Method: While the majority of prior SV research has focused on representing what is already available in the code (i.e., the implementation) or information derived from it (i.e., various metrics), the presented approach instead makes the design concepts and original developers' intentions -- both significant sources of information in terms of software development and maintenance -- readily and contextually available in a visualisation environment that tightly integrates the code artefacts with their original functional requirements and development activity. Results: Our approach has been implemented in a prototype tool called ScrumCity with the proof of concept being demonstrated using six real-world open source systems. A preliminary case study has further been carried out with real world data. Conclusion: Conceptual Visualisation, as implemented in ScrumCity, shows early promise in enabling developers and managers (and potentially other stakeholders) to traverse and explore multiple aspects of software product and process artefacts in a synchronised manner, achieving traceability between the two.