The Specula Project Support Environment (PSE) provides a framework for semi-automatically generating so-called Software Project Control Centers (dashboards for controlling a software development project).

It provides components for collecting measurement data (such as effort, cost, schedule, and defects) using data access packages (connecting to existing data repositories) and web-based collection forms (for manual data import). It further provides components for analyzing the gathered data using different control techniques and methods (e.g., checking an effort curve against a corresponding baseline or a milestone trend) and for visualizing data through role-oriented views (e.g., Gantt charts or milestone trend charts).

Specula PSE comes with a set of standard data collection components, control techniques, and views, which may be instantiated for generating a Software Project Control Center depending on the goals related to your project. Furthermore, you may specify new components for customizing the control center to your specific needs.

Specula was developed at the Fraunhofer-Institute for Experimental Software Engineering (IESE) as part of a public German research project called Soft-Pit (grant ID 01ISE07A). The focus of the Soft-Pit project was to conceptually develop holistic Software Project Control Centers, which are able to address all parts relevant for controlling software development projects.