Supporting collaborative software development through the visualization of socio-technical dependencies

Abstract

One of the reasons large-scale software development is difficult is the number of dependencies that software engineers face. These dependencies create a need for communication and coordination that requires continuous effort by developers. Empirical studies, including our own, suggest that technical dependencies among software components create social dependencies among the software developers implementing those components. Based on this observation, we developed Ariadne, a plug-in for Eclipse. Ariadne analyzes software projects for dependencies and collects authorship information about projects relying on configuration management repositories. Ariadne can "translate" technical dependencies among components into social dependencies among developers. We have created visualizations to convey dependency information and the presence of coordination problems identified in our previous work. We believe the information conveyed in the visualizations will prove useful for software developers.