The ability to track progress is critical to the success of any software project. When it comes to large programs, tracking progress becomes more difficult. Normally, project tracking data is available in tabular formats, which are often not easy to interpret. Adding visualization effects to the project data helps make decision making simpler and quicker. The authors of this paper discuss the need for visualization of testing data, mainly for large-scale software development projects.

This paper is a straightforward effort to elaborate the background used, and the steps taken by the authors and team, to build the collective set of visualization techniques called the SeeTest visualization schema, and to integrate it with the message passing interface (MPI) testing tool (MTT). This was implemented for the Open MPI community. This MTT visualization extension took care of various existing deficiencies, and proved to be effective when compared with the existing reporting tools.

The authors explain various issues faced during tool development, including the changes they brought in to address them, which is commendable.