Visualization - A key concept for multidimensional performance modeling in software engineering management

A major difficulty with current organizational performance models in software engineering management is to represent many possible viewpoints quantitatively and in a consolidated manner, while at the same time keeping track of the values of the individual dimensions of performance. The models currently proposed do not meet the analytical requirements of software engineering management when various viewpoints must be taken into account concurrently. This difficulty is compounded by the fact that the underlying quantitative data is of high dimensionality and therefore the usual two and three dimensional approaches to visualization are generally not sufficient for representing such models. This paper describes the proposed concepts for a tool for multidimensional performance modeling in software engineering management. Due to the continuously increasing amount and the high dimensionality of the data underlying these models, a particular focus is given in this paper on potential visualization concepts and techniques that could be incorporated into the proposed tool.