Mobile Visualization Supporting Awareness in Collaborative Software Development

Abstract

To foster innovation and competition, an increasing number of software teams are becoming distributed. Such distribution makes continuous collaboration and continuous awareness support a necessity and also a great challenge. Traditional desktop-based approaches are insufficient for the requirements of continuous awareness. In practical process of software development, an awareness tool on mobile devices is also desirable for team members to obtain the awareness information continuously. This paper addresses how to effectively present collaborative development activities using aesthetic visualization on mobile screens. Our approach supports multiple views suitable for software developers as well as team leaders. A small scale usability experiment has been conducted and reported.