Activity Heatmap

Helps visualize developer activities to detect workload imbalances and unhealthy work practices.

The Oobeya Activity Heatmap module visualizes the daily activities of software development teams, helping analyze workload distribution, contribution diversity, and developer experience. It scores various activities such as commits, pull requests (code reviews), code changes, and comments, and presents trends over time in a heatmap format.

With this module, you can:

Identify overloaded or under-contributing developers.
Detect unbalanced workload distributions.
Encourage fairer task sharing within teams.

1. Key Features

Analysis by daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, or custom time range
Tracking of PR, commit, code line changes, and code review comments
Color-coded heatmap view by developer
Developer Work Log with detailed contribution analysis
Team selection and role-based filtering
Working days filter (configured under Admin Panel > General Settings)

2. Scoring Mechanism

In the Activity Heatmap module, developer activities are calculated using data from different contribution types and normalized for visualization in the heatmap.

2.1. Daily Normalization & Z-Score

The highest-scoring developer each day is taken as the 100% reference.
Other developers are scaled against this maximum → rank_ratio.
Daily contributions are normalized.
The average ratio and standard deviation of all developers are calculated.
Ratios are converted to z-scores and normalized into the 0–100 range.
These scores are mapped into color tones in the heatmap.

2.2. Activity-Based Score Formulas

2.2.1. Commit Activities

COMMIT_SCORE = (COMMITS × commit_coeff) +
               (LINES_ADDED × added_coeff) +
               (LINES_DELETED × deleted_coeff) +
               (LINES_EDITED × edited_coeff)

2.2.2. Pull Request Activities

PR_OPEN_SCORE        = PRs Created × pr_open_coeff
PR_REVIEW_SCORE      = PR Reviews × pr_review_coeff
PR_APPROVAL_SCORE    = PR Approvals × pr_approve_coeff
PR_NEEDS_WORK_SCORE  = PR Needs Work × pr_needs_work_coeff
PR_COMMENT_SCORE     = PR Comments × pr_comment_coeff

2.2.3. Total Score

TOTAL_RANK_SCORE = COMMIT_SCORE + PR_OPEN_SCORE + PR_REVIEW_SCORE +
                   PR_APPROVAL_SCORE + PR_NEEDS_WORK_SCORE + PR_COMMENT_SCORE

2.2.4. Heatmap Visualization

Normalized scores are mapped into color tones.
Darker tones represent higher activity, lighter tones represent lower activity.

This mechanism ensures fair comparisons across teams, allows organizations to adjust the impact of different activity types, and provides results that are easy to track visually.

3. Admin Panel Settings

Weight values are assigned to different activities. These coefficients determine how each activity type influences the overall heatmap score and visualization.

Location: Administration > Activity Heatmap

Coefficient Settings

For each activity type, you can define its weight on the total score.

Activity

Description

Default

Commits

Number of commits made

2.0

Lines Added

Number of lines of code added

0.1

Lines Deleted

Number of lines of code deleted

0.1

Lines Edited

Number of lines of code modified

0.1

PRs Created

Number of pull requests created

1.0

PR Reviews

Number of code reviews performed

1.5

PR Approvals

Number of pull requests approved

0.25

PR Needs Work

Number of pull requests sent back for changes

0.5

PR Comments

Number of comments made on pull requests

1.0

4. Dashboard Components

The Activity Heatmap Dashboard consists of multiple components to analyze daily developer activities from different perspectives. Each component visualizes contribution types, trends over time, and distribution within teams.

4.1. Activity Heatmap

Activity Heatmap is the core component that visualizes developers’ daily activities. Each cell represents a developer’s contribution score for a given day.

Color Intensity: The cell’s color reflects the developer’s performance level that day. Darker tones represent higher activity, lighter tones lower activity.
Normalized Scores: Daily scores are normalized against the highest contribution of the day, ensuring fair comparisons between developers and across days.
Time Filters: Analysis can be done daily, weekly, monthly, or within custom date ranges.

The Activity Heatmap helps teams visually detect workload imbalances and quickly identify potential overload or low participation.

4.2. Developer Work Log

The Developer Work Log provides a detailed list of daily activities for each developer within the selected date range. It provides the raw data behind the scores displayed in the heatmap in a tabular format.

This section shows:

Total score by developer (normalized)
Total activity counts (commits, PRs, comments, etc.)
Daily contribution cells with activity counts and corresponding points

The goal is not only to view general scores, but also to analyze in detail which days each developer was more active and which types of contributions they focused on.

4.3. Filters

The Activity Heatmap module offers various filtering options to enable more focused and meaningful analysis:

Working Days: Ensures scores are calculated only based on your company’s defined working days (e.g., Monday–Friday). Configurable in Admin > General Settings.
Team Selection: Select one or more teams to view only their activities in the heatmap.
Role Filter: Choose specific roles (e.g., Developer, QA) to include only those roles in the analysis. Non-development contributions can be excluded.
Activity Type: Select desired activity types (commits, PR creation, reviews, comments, etc.) to filter the heatmap by those contributions.

With these filters, teams can gain more precise and targeted insights for specific time periods, roles, or activity types.

5. Data Sources

The Activity Heatmap module aggregates data from different development tools and contribution types to calculate developer activities.

Commits: Commit records from Git repositories (Azure DevOps, GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket, Gitea)
Code Changes: Lines added, deleted, and modified
Pull Requests: Created PRs (GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket, Azure Repos, etc.)
Code Reviews: Reviews performed, PR approvals, or rejections
Comments: Comments made on pull requests
Developer Profiles: Only developers defined in Oobeya are included in the analysis

Data from these sources is weighted with the coefficients defined in the admin panel and converted into the total score.

6. Recommended Use Cases

The Activity Heatmap module can be used in different scenarios to make team activities fairer, more balanced, and more effective:

Scenario

Benefit

Sprint Reviews

Analyzes contribution intensity at the end of a sprint, supporting healthier retrospectives.

Workload Balance

Identifies overloaded or low-participation team members to rebalance task assignments.

Engagement & Motivation

Helps spot developers with consistently low contributions and supports motivation-boosting actions.

PR Review Culture

Measures the review culture of teams through PR reviews, comments, and approvals.

Performance Improvement

Tracks collaboration and contribution diversity to uncover training and coaching needs.

This module is not only for measuring individual performance but also a powerful team management tool for monitoring engagement levels and workload balance.

7. FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions)

Why are some developers not visible?

Only developers registered in the Oobeya platform and assigned to active teams are included in the analysis.

How are scores calculated?

Each activity contribution is multiplied by the coefficients defined in the admin panel. These scores are then normalized daily.

What does the working days filter do?

It excludes non-working days (such as weekends) from the analysis.

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Last updated 2 months ago

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