No abstract

Software project management involves assessing the software system risks and costs, establishing a master schedule, integrating the various engineering specialities and design groups, maintaining configuration control and continuously auditing the effort to ensure that cost and schedule are met and the technical requirements objectives are satisfied. This paper presents a new graphical representation model for controlling and managing a project development process using metaphors and visual representation techniques.Our main objective is not the visualization of technical implementation aspects but the integrated representation of the software project development process using real world metaphors. The benefits of using real world metaphors for diverse purposes have been explained in previous studies which mentioned for example the unconscious use of spatial and perceptive skills already acquired.The presented metaphorical image of the development process explores several key indicators and supports problem detection and resolution in aspects of diverse complexity such as milestone trend analysis, planning deviations tracking, evaluation of error control procedures, assessment of change management policies and product quality estimation.The first step has been to define the critical questions to be addressed by the model. The major issues are summarized in Figure 1 and information about the process, product and the resources is considered.The next step to cover the aspects in Figure 1 has been the definition of the key indicators to be represented and then, the study of a metaphor for the selected indicators in the real word.When designing and analyzing the potential representations we started from the general idea that the development process involves an increasing accumulated effort in hours that bears an apparent similarity to a mountain with a rising slope representing hours accumulated through the project duration. Most of the information to be visualized has the time or the "when" aspect associated to it. Therefore, time as an essential feature, performed a central role in the representation. Table 1 shows the final selection of the metaphorical representations for the key indicators and Figure 2 presents a schematic view of the proposed visualization. Figure 2 indicates the relationships among the questions in Figure 1 and the area or elements of the visualization that give answer to it. This simple but powerful graphical representation assists in describing, establishing relationships, and supporting reasoning and the management procedures.There is additional information that might be worthy of inclusion. However, most of it is considered more suitable for a second level or suitable to be implemented through zoom or any other appropriate technique to present the project details.