As staff members of the Eclipse Foundation, we faced the challenge of automating many of our manual workflows while minimizing the cost of doing so.
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This page is a Forage.
From Functional Testing
> Swim collected widget html as batch tests ran and presented them in compact and browsable swim-lane diagrams suitable for understanding long-running, multi-participant transactions, notably Eclipse new-committer elections. pdf 
CUNNINGHAM, Ward, [no date]. The “Swim” System for User-Oriented Presentation of Test-Case Results. pdf
> # Conclusion
> […] we've focused on supporting conversations: conversations between developers, conversations between developers and sysadmins; conversations between developers and users; and even conversations between users and other users.
See Conversations
> Second, we've worked at, and visualized, the right level of abstraction. Our abstractions are simple enough to understand because we don't talk in computer terms such as "database updates", "ajax form posts", or "user1"; instead we use the user's vocabulary, show the user's interface panels, and use the names of real people and roles in our simulations. At the same time, our abstractions are detailed enough to be believed because we are running the real code in our simulations instead of bubbles and arrows diagrams. We respect the user's expertise without dumbing down our system or forcing them to use our terminology.
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There is an echo of swim in these columns:
page
I (Ward) enjoyed reading about swim last night. I had forgotten so many little details. In fact, I was unsure what I had shown Jon so many years ago that he was remembering. That little bit about dropping out of the visualization and into "exploratory testing" was there for Elisabeth Hendrickson but when I showed this work at an event she ran I was over time before I got to that part. The work was also a dud at the Pacific Northwest Software Quality Conference because the attendees their did not have the freedom to implement such a system even if they could imagine it. Finally I thought I would reach the empowered Eclipse Committers when they tried exploring but they never did. When I asked why I was told there was no reason to explore because everything just worked. matrix
Kudos to Jon Udell for seeing the value present in the work.
And kudos to Brian Marick for the challenge to make the way things work visible.