Let's go to the whiteboard

Cherubini, Mauro; Venolia, Gina; DeLine, Rob; Ko, Amy J.

doi:10.1145/1240624.1240714

Cited by 166 publications

(27 citation statements)

References 19 publications

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“…Cherubini et al [5] looked at how and why developers use drawing during software development. Treude and Storey [6] investigated the role of awareness tools such as Jazz dashboards and feeds in supporting development activities.…”

Section: Awareness In Software Developmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Developer Dashboards: The Need for Qualitative Analytics

2013

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Abstract-Prominent tech companies including IBM, Microsoft, and Google have embraced an analytics-driven culture to help improve their decision making. Analytics aim to help practitioners answer questions critical to their projects, e.g., "Are we on track to deliver the next release on schedule?" and "Of the recent features added, which are the most defect prone?" by providing fact-based views about their projects. Analytic results are often quantitative in nature, presenting data as graphical dashboards using reports and charts. While current dashboards are often geared towards project managers, they are not well suited to help individual developers. By analyzing Mozilla developer interviews we noted that developers face challenges maintaining a global understanding of the tasks they are working on and that they desire improved support for situational awareness, a form of qualitative analytics that is difficult to achieve with the current quantitative tools.In this article, we motivate the need for qualitative dashboards designed to improve developers' situational awareness by providing task tracking and prioritizing capabilities, presenting insights on the workloads of others, listing individual actions, and providing custom views to help them manage their workload while performing their day-to-day development tasks.

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Section: Awareness In Software Developmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Developer Dashboards: The Need for Qualitative Analytics

2013

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“…2.1 are beginning to be echoed in these and other studies. For example, Cherubini et al articulate goals such as sharing thoughts, grounding ideas, manipulating concepts, and brainstorming as reasons why software designers sketch (Cherubini et al 2007). In both co-located and distributed teams, diagrams are indispensible for explaining core design concepts to new team members (Yatani et al 2009).…”

Section: Sketching In Software Designmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Most boxes remain unlabeled, various forms of shorthand are used, and the sketches remain abstract in nature. Various studies of software designers confirm the prevalence of low-detail models, particularly early in design sessions, noting that they allow ideas to be expressed quickly and modified easily (Cherubini et al 2007;Petre 2009). Often, too, quick sketches of prototypes can find the same usability problems as high fidelity prototypes (Virzi et al 1996).…”

Section: Use Of Low-detail Modelsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…While many software design tools exist and are in use daily, when faced with a given design problem, more often than not developers will turn to the whiteboard, informally sketching and writing to work through potential solutions (Cherubini et al 2007;Damm et al 2000a;Mangano et al 2010;Nickerson et al 2008;Petre 2009). This is typical during the conceptual stages of software design, when no code is in existence yet, but frequently also takes place during maintenance design (Grisham et al 2009), when a code base has been developed but must be modified to, for instance, incorporate new functionality or optimize a key part.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This is typical during the conceptual stages of software design, when no code is in existence yet, but frequently also takes place during maintenance design (Grisham et al 2009), when a code base has been developed but must be modified to, for instance, incorporate new functionality or optimize a key part. Design issues also may arise spontaneously, such as when a developer works on a task, becomes stuck, and involves one or more colleagues in an impromptu design session at the whiteboard to work through the issue (Cherubini et al 2007).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The design and evaluation of a tool to support software designers at the whiteboard

Mangano

Hoek

2012

Autom Softw Eng

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Despite the availability of advanced software design tools, software developers are known to frequently turn to the whiteboard when faced with a specific design problem. Free from any restrictions, they engage in an informal form of software design that relies heavily on sketching. However, whereas whiteboards afford flexibility and fluidity, they at the same time limit a designer in only being able to draw and erase content. This paper presents Calico, a novel software design tool that leverages electronic whiteboards to enhance the design experience with explicit support for the creative, exploratory aspects of design. Specifically, Calico offers a grid to partition the drawing space, scraps to organize and manipulate the content, and a reusable palette together with gesture-based input to address several natural behaviors exhibited by software designers, including frequent shifts in focus, use of low-detail models, use of a variety of notations, and a tendency to refine representations. To evaluate Calico, we performed a laboratory experiment involving the design of an educational traffic simulator. Through a three-pronged analysis examining the use of Calico's features, design behaviors exhibited by the participants, and the nature of the design conversations, we show how Calico benefits the design process as it takes place at the whiteboard.

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Towards a Quantitative Framework for Evaluating the Expressive Power of Conceptual System Models

Mordecai¹,

Dori²

2018

INSIGHT

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Conceptual models describe, explain, and specify the function, concept, structure, and behavior of complex systems. Quantifying the contribution of conceptual models to stakeholder understanding of the systems‐of‐interest has been a great challenge. This difficulty hinders justifying the use of formal modeling and simulation of complex systems and the adoption of a holistic model‐based systems engineering (MBSE) approach. The informativity of a model is the value of the information it conveys. Conceptual system model informativity is a key performance indicator for MBSE. We introduce MIA – Model Informativity Analysis – a quantitative, utility‐based, prescriptive approach for boosting conceptual models’ expressive power and measuring the value of the information they provide. We define an integrated informativity index, “I3”, which aggregates model scores of diverse informativity‐enhancing factors. We demonstrate various aspects of MIA with Object Process Methodology, OPM – a model‐based systems engineering paradigm and ISO‐19450 standard. OPM caters to quantitative informativity analysis due its formality, comprehensive function‐structure‐behavior modeling, and bimodal equivalent graphical‐textual representation.

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Let's go to the whiteboard

Cited by 166 publications

References 19 publications

Developer Dashboards: The Need for Qualitative Analytics

Developer Dashboards: The Need for Qualitative Analytics

The design and evaluation of a tool to support software designers at the whiteboard

Towards a Quantitative Framework for Evaluating the Expressive Power of Conceptual System Models

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