Title: Visual resource monitoring for complex multi-project environments

Authors: Walt Akers

Addresses: Department of Engineering Management and Systems Engineering, National Centers for System of Systems Engineering, Old Dominion University, 2101 Systems Research and Academic Building, Norfolk, VA 23508, USA

Abstract: This paper explores the use of visualisations to support governance of complex systems. The problem area that is addressed in this discussion is the management of resources within an environment where multiple unrelated activities require access to a common pool of resources. This begins with an exploration of the existing techniques that are used to visualise resource utilisation and identifies the challenges they encounter when applied to large or unwieldy data sets. The paper continues by discussing the use of temporal heat maps as a visualisation approach that addresses many of these issues and also allows the presentation to be tuned to provide new perspectives on the same data.

Keywords: project management; complex systems; system governance; data visualisation; visual resource monitoring; multi-project environments; temporal heat maps.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSSE.2015.068814

International Journal of System of Systems Engineering, 2015 Vol.6 No.1/2, pp.112 - 126

Received: 15 Oct 2014
Accepted: 03 Dec 2014
Published online: 13 Apr 2015 *

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