Project management for effective software process improvement must be achieved based on quantitative data. However, because data collection for measurement requires high costs and collaboration with developers, it is difficult to collect coherent, quantita

Figure1.ThearchitectureofEPMintheESEEframework

plesoftwarerepositories.Figure1showsthearchitectureofEPMintheESEEframework.TheESEEframeworkisde-signedforsupportingmeasurementbasedprocessimprove-mentinsoftwareorganizationsbyprovidingvariousplug-gabletools.EPMconsistsoffourcomponentsaccordingtotheESEEframework:datacollection,formattranslation,datastore,anddataanalysis/visualization.Thissectionde-scribesanoverviewofEPMandthebasicdata owthroughEPM.

Automaticdatacollection:EPMautomaticallycollectsmultipleprojectdatafromthreekindsofrepositoriesinwidelyusedsoftwaredevelopmentsupportsystems.Forinstance,EPMcollectsversioninghistoriesfromcon gura-tionmanagementsystems(e.g.CVS1),mailarchivesfrommailinglistmanagers(e.g.Mailman2,Majordomo3,fml4),andissuetrackingrecordsfrom(bug)issuetrackingsys-tems(e.g.GNATS5,Bugzilla6).Becausethesedataareaccumulatedthrougheverydaydevelopmentactivitiesus-ingcommonGUItools(e.g.SourceShareTM7,WinCVS8),developers/managersdonotneedadditionalworkfordatacollection.Also,itdosenottakehighcoststointroduceEPMintoprojects/organizationsbecausethesystemsasthesourcesofdatacollectionareopensourcefreeware.

Formattranslationanddatastore:EPMconvertsthecollecteddataintotheXMLformatcalledthestandardizedempiricalsoftwareengineeringdata,sothatEPMcandeal

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3Majordomo,/majordomo/4fml,/index.html.en

5GNATS,/software/gnats/6Bugzilla,/

7SourceShareTM,/8WinCVS,/

2Mailman,1CVS,

withnotonlytheabovethreekindsofsoftwarerepositoriesbutalsovariouskindsofrepositoriesaccordingtopurposesformeasurement.Datafromothersystemsareavailablebysmalladjustmentsofparameters.ThedataconvertedintotheXMLformatisstoredinthePostgreSQL9database.Analysisandvisualization:EPManalyzesthedatastoredinthePostgreSQLdatabase.Forinstance,inordertoanalyzedatarelatedtoCVS,EPMextractstheprocessdataabouteventssuchascheckin/checkout,transitionsofsourcecodesize,versionhistoriesofcomponents,andsoforth.Then,EPMvisualizesvariousmeasurementresultssuchasthegrowthoflinesofcodeandtherelationshipbe-tweencheckinandcheckout.EPMalsoprovidessummariesofeachrepositorysuchasinformationofCVSlogs.Allthemeasurementresultsareavailablethroughusingcommonwebbrowsers(e.g.seeFigure2),sothatusersareeasytosharetheresults.

Inthisway,EPMsupportsuserstoobtainquantitativedataatlowcostinrealtimeandprovidesthemwithvariousmeasurementresultsforunderstandingthecurrentdevelop-mentstatus.Thiswouldhelpuserskeeptheirprojectsundercontrol.

3Visualizationsofmeasurementresults

Dataminingtechniquesforsoftwarerepositorieshavebeenproposedtounderstandreasonsofsoftwarechanges[7],toidentifyhowcommunicationdelayamongdevel-opersinphysicallydistributedenvironmentshaveeffectsonsoftwaredevelopment[8],todetectpotentialsoftwarechangesandincompletechanges[11],andsoforth.Incon-trasttothesetools,thefeaturesofEPMaretovisualize

9PostgreSQL,

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