what-when-how
In Depth Tutorials and Information
chosen because they highlighted not only the software managers' awareness of the
connection between dependencies and collaboration, but also tough issues that arise
when these dependencies are not known and collaboration is not thought through
intelligently. he four scenarios come from two companies that are discussed in fur-
ther detail in the paper [4], and a visualization solution is given for each.
hese visualization solutions hinge on the fact that the biggest hurdle to cross
when solving a problem is understanding fully what is actually going on. One way
to facilitate coordination activities is to make everyone completely aware of other
workers' activities and current workloads, so as to make the environment more
conducive to noninterrupting assistance-giving. However, when this information
is obtained, it is important to decide a way to convey this information that does
not confuse or impede the thought process in any way. Ariadne uses visualization
to convey this information in a sociogram network much like the one shown in
Figure 15.6 [4].
In the first scenario, a company has a software project manager who is in charge
of eight sub-programmers who are working on a client-server application. Also
working on this project is another team of programmers who are working on the
server side of the application. he project managers of both teams are in close com-
munication with each other at all times, for obvious reasons. In this scenario, the
client-side software manager calls a meeting of the developers on her team so that
she can be prepared for a software package meeting later in the day. Each pro-
grammer on the manager's team reports what he or she believes will be ready and
prepared by the next scheduled deadline. It is at this meeting that the manager
discovers that, with the deadline fast approaching, one of her programmers has
not begun to integrate his code with two other developers, a step that is abso-
lutely necessary to make scheduled deadline. he client-side software manager here
determines that the programmer's deadline is not feasible because he will not have
enough time to finish his workload on schedule. To work on this implementation
in Ariadne, the plug-in provides a “Manager Awareness View” that lets managers
know when team members have begun the integration process in their workload.
he Manager Awareness View of Ariadne is shown in Figure 15.7. he nodes inside
this view are the workers themselves, and recent connections between two pro-
grammers are shown as an edge in this graph. More information can be found
about the connection by hovering over the edge itself.
In the second scenario, a programmer is working on a particular component
of the software package in question that heavily interfaces with the user-interface
application layer of the package. A second programmer is working on a compo-
nent of the package that resides in the user-interface application layer itself, and
regularly requests information from the component that the first programmer is
working on. In this particular situation, the first programmer has finished the
application programming interface that it required for the component in question.
he second programmer, however, has not notified anyone of whether or not his
component is inished. he irst programmer is worried because there may not be
