Improving the experience for software-measurement system end-users: A story of two companies

• Published in: Information and software technology Vol. 103; pp. 216 - 225
• Main Authors: Wang, Haoyu, Hebig, Regina
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier B.V 01-11-2018
• Subjects: Computer and Information Science; Computer Science; Data- och informationsvetenskap; End-user experience; long; measurement program; Measurement systems; time; End-user experience; Measurement systems; Performance
• ISSN: 0950-5849; 1873-6025
• DOI: 10.1016/j.infsof.2018.06.006

Software measurement systems are used in large companies to provide developers with up-to-date feedback and metrics.
However, the front-ends of these systems are often not ready to provide a real-time experience for the end-users, who sometimes have to wait minutes before visualizations are provided.
In this paper, we present the case studies of two large international companies and compare alternative technological setups for measurement system front-ends used and explored within these companies. We use a publicly available data-set for a performance evaluation and to analyze the results.
For both companies we found significant performance differences between the alternative setups. However, in one of the companies these differences are not there for large data-sets. Furthermore, we found that not all setups enable the visualization of the newest available data.
Our results indicate that the choice of the visualization component has a larger impact on the performance than the choice of the data storage. However, companies are also willing to invest into setups that ensure that visualized measures are always up-to-date.