STRATOS: Using Visualization to Support Decisions in Strategic Software Release Planning

Aseniero, B., Wun, T., Ledo, D., Ruhe, G., Tang, A., and Carpendale, S. (2015). STRATOS: Using Visualization to Support Decisions in Strategic Software Release Planning. In CHI 2015: Proceedings of the 2015 SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 1479--1488.

Abstract

Software is typically developed incrementally and released in stages. Planning these releases involves deciding which features of the system should be implemented for each release. This is a complex planning process involving numerous constraints and factors—trade-offs that often make decisions difficult. Since the success of a product depends on this plan, it is important to understand the trade-offs between different release plans and to make an informed choice. We present STRATOS, a tool that visualizes several optimized software release plans simultaneously. The visualization shows several attributes about each plan that are important to planners. Multiple plans are shown in a single layout to help planners find and understand the trade-offs between different plans. We evaluated our tool via a qualitative study, finding that STRATOS enables a range of decision-making processes, and ultimately helping our participants optimize their planning.

Materials

PDF File (http://hcitang.org/papers/2015-chi2015-stratos.pdf)
Video (http://hcitang.org/papers/2015-chi2015-stratos.mp4)
DOI (http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2702123.2702426)

BibTeX

@inproceedings{aseniero2015stratos,
  publisher = {ACM},
  pages = {1479--1488},
  videourl = {http://hcitang.org/papers/2015-chi2015-stratos.mp4},
  pdfurl = {http://hcitang.org/papers/2015-chi2015-stratos.pdf},
  year = {2015},
  type = {conference},
  doi = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2702123.2702426},
  title = {STRATOS: Using Visualization to Support Decisions in Strategic Software Release Planning},
  booktitle = {CHI 2015: Proceedings of the 2015 SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems},
  author = { Aseniero, Bon Adriel and Wun, Tiffany and Ledo, David and Ruhe, Guenther and Tang, Anthony and Carpendale, Sheelagh },
  abstract = {Software is typically developed incrementally and released in stages. Planning these releases involves deciding which features of the system should be implemented for each release. This is a complex planning process involving numerous constraints and factors—trade-offs that often make decisions difficult. Since the success of a product depends on this plan, it is important to understand the trade-offs between different release plans and to make an informed choice. We present STRATOS, a tool that visualizes several optimized software release plans simultaneously. The visualization shows several attributes about each plan that are important to planners. Multiple plans are shown in a single layout to help planners find and understand the trade-offs between different plans. We evaluated our tool via a qualitative study, finding that STRATOS enables a range of decision-making processes, and ultimately helping our participants optimize their planning.},
}