Despite increasing popularity of developer dashboards, the effectiveness of dashboards is still in question. In order to design a dashboard that is effective and useful for developers, it is important to know (a) what information developers need to see in a dashboard, and (b) how developers want to use a dashboard with that necessary information. To answer these questions, we conducted two series of face-to-face individual interviews with developers. In the first step we analyzed answers, build a Goal-Question-Metric model and designed a precooked developer dashboard. Then, during the second separate series of interviews, we validated the GQM and derived feedback on the designed dashboard. Given that the cost of dashboard customization prevents developers from utilizing dashboards, we believe that our findings can provide a solid starting point to build precooked developer dashboards that can be readily utilized by software companies.

It is a cliche to say that there is a gap between research and practice. As the interest and importance in the practical impact of research has been growing, the gap between research and practice is expected to be narrowing. However, our study reveals that there still seems to be a wide gap. We survey so ware engineers about what they care about when developing so ware. We then compare our survey results with the research topics of the papers published in ICSE/FSE recently. We found the following discrepancy: while so ware engineers care more about so ware development productivity than the quality of so ware, papers on research areas closely related to so ware productivity--such as so ware development process management and so ware development techniques--are significantly less published than papers on so ware verification and validation that account for more than half of publications. We also found that so ware engineers are in great need for techniques for accurate effort estimation, and they are not necessarily knowledgable about techniques they can use to meet their needs.