I have post-Ph.D. day dream as well.
I alway have interest in OLAP (online analytical processing), data
mining and business intelligence. Multi-dimensional cube is the
foundation of OLAP, and the dimension is the way measures can be
summarized.
In terms of Hackystat, measures are raw sensor data. We can at least
identify 3 dimensions:
(1) Time: multi-level dimension, day, week, month
(2) project member
(3) workspaces: (also multi-level)
There might be a 4th dimension: project --> all projects in an organization
The idea of multi-level dimension is a nice abstraction for google map
style drill down capability as well as multi-project telemetry Philip
mentioned in his email. It offers a uniformed way to deal with
interval, project membership, workspace, etc.
When I get bored hacking Java code, I like to read fooling around with
database servers. If I can find a way to define custom dimensions and
hierarchy relationship, then there might be a huge opportunity to
leverage existing business intelligence infrastructure offered by major
db vendors.
However, the most difficult part is always to make metrics analysis
actually be useful in project management and process improvement.
Cheers,
Cedric
Philip Johnson wrote:
Greetings all,
I've been thinking about the following two ideas for a while, and
thought I'd throw them out for general consumption. Cedric: do not
despair: these are "post-Ph.D. thesis" enhancements :-)
I. Google Map-style Telemetry
The user interaction with google maps is quite nifty: you can
click-drag the map image to move around in the map, and you can zoom
in or out using a slider.
Imagine a telemetry report where you don't specify the Interval: it
displays a Telemetry "map" at a default grain-size (say, Weeks), and a
default number of weeks (say, the last six weeks). You can zoom in
(to days) or zoom out (to months, or years). You click-drag to move
the timeline back and forth.
This would be pretty cool for exploratory purposes. You might start at
the 30,000 foot level (i.e. months) and move around through the past
couple of years of data, then when you find something of interest, you
"swoop down" to the week or day level to see what's up.
II. Multi-project Telemetry
Currently, the Telemetry Report requires that you select a single
Project. Imagine instead that this was a selectable list. Then, you
could do things like compare the trends of two or three or four
Projects on a single chart.
For extra credit, supply an "alignment" option. What this would do is
tell the charting mechanism to add an "offset" in days to all of the
data for the specified project. The reason for this is to allow you
to compare project data from projects that occurred at different
times. Let's say, for example, that Project Foo went from Jan-June
2003, and Project Bar went from July-December 2004. You are interested
in comparing the "shape" of the telemetry for, say, open issues, for
the two projects. The problem is that if you chart these two projects,
the trend lines will show up in different regions of the chart--you
need a way to "shift" Project Foo forward six months in time so that
its start date aligns with the start date for Project Bar.
III. Multi-Project Google Map-style Telemetry
Now put I and II together. We could enhance our "Google Telemetry
Map" with an additional interface control similar to the way google
maps has the "Map-Satellite-Hybrid" control to overlay images. But in
our case, the user interface control would list your current projects
and allow you to selectively "overlay" telemetry data from muliple
projects on the same chart.
OK, enough Friday Morning DayDreaming. Back to work on 7.3.
Cheers,
Philip
