System dynamics software process simulator for staffing policies decision support

James Collofello, Dan Houston, Ioana Rus, Anamika Chauhan, Douglas M. Sycamore, Dwight Smith-Daniels

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

22 Scopus citations

Abstract

Staff attrition is a problem often faced by software development organizations. How can a manager plan for the risk of losses due to attrition? Can policies for this purpose be formulated to address his/her specific organization and project? A software development process simulator tuned to a specific organization is used for running `what-if' scenarios for assessing the effects of managerial staffing decisions on a project's budget, schedule and quality. We developed a system dynamics simulator of an incremental software development process and used it for analyzing the effect of the following policies: to replace engineers who leave the project, to overstaff in the beginning of the project or to do nothing, hoping that the project will still be completed in time and within budget. This paper presents the simulator, the experiments that we ran, the results that we obtained and our analysis and conclusions.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publicationProceedings of the Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences
PublisherInstitute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Computer Society
Pages103-111
Number of pages9
Volume6
StatePublished - 1998
EventProceedings of the 1998 31st Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences. Part 1 (of 7) - Big Island, HI, USA
Duration: Jan 6 1998Jan 9 1998

Other

OtherProceedings of the 1998 31st Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences. Part 1 (of 7)
CityBig Island, HI, USA
Period1/6/981/9/98

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Software
  • Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

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