Supporting Reflection in Software Development with Everyday Working Tools

Abstract

Through their day-to-day usage collaboration tools collect data on the work process. These data can be used to aid participants’ retrospective reflection on the process. The paper shows how this can be done in software development project work. Through a case study we demonstrate how retrospective reflection was conducted by use of an industry approach to project retrospectives combined with the examination of historical data in Trac, an issue tracker. The data helped the team reconstruct the project trajectory by aiding the recall of significant events, leading to a shift in the team’s perspective on the project. The success of the toolaided retrospective reflection is attributed to its organization as well as the type of historical data examined through the tool and the tool features for navigating the data. These insights can be used to help project teams determine the potential of their tools to aid retrospective reflection.