Towards an artifact to support agile teams in software analytics activities

Abstract

Software analytics supports data-driven decision making, which allows software practitioners to leverage valuable insights from software data to improve their processes and many quality aspects of the software. In this paper, we present an artifact designed from a set of patterns to support agile teams to plan and manage software analysis activities, named Software Analytics Canvas. Further, we report the study undertaken to evaluate the ease of use and the utility of our canvas from the practitioners' viewpoint, and a participatory design session carried out to collect information about possible artifact improvements. In general, subjects found the artifact useful, but some of them reported difficulties in learning and understanding how to use it. In the participatory design, they pointed out improvement points and a new layout for the canvas components. The results of both studies helped us refine the proposed artifact, improving both the terms used in each element and the layout of the blocks to make more sense for its users.