Concept, Implementation and Evaluation of a Web-Based Software Cockpit

Software cockpits (software project control centers) provide systematic support for monitoring and controlling the activities in a software development project. Important aspects are to track progress, to visualize team performance, and to provide feedback about the quality of delivered results. Therefore, software cockpits integrate and visualize data from various data sources such as project plans, requirement management, version control, as well as test results. Each of these data sources represents a different perspective on the software project. The integrated view provided by a software cockpit produces a complete and persistent picture of the project status. This paper describes the architecture and functionality of a Web-based software cockpit and its implementation with open source software from the Business Intelligence area. Furthermore, the results and lessons learned from evaluating the practical benefits of the software cockpit in context of a large software development organization are presented.