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Agent-based simulation of software development process: a case study at AVL

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Published
Publication date2012
Host publicationProceedings of the 2012 Winter Simulation Conference
Place of PublicationLos Alamitos, California
PublisherIEEE Computer Society
Pages1-11
Number of pages12
ISBN (electronic)978-1-4673-4781-5
ISBN (print)978-1-4673-4779-2
<mark>Original language</mark>English

Abstract

Software development projects are difficult to manage due to the high uncertainty in their various phases. Simulation is one of the tools that has been used to help software project managers produce project plans. Research into software process simulation modeling (SPSM) shows the dominance of discrete-event simulation and system dynamics. This paper supports the use of ABS in SPSM. We propose a practical effort function to estimate developers’ behavior. The other contribution of this paper is to demonstrate how the ABS model can be developed, calibrated and validated using data readily available to many software development companies/departments. This paper focuses on the construction phase of a tailored Rational Unified Process used in a geographically distributed software development department at AVL. The results look promising but more work needs to be done to include ABS into one of the mainstream simulation paradigms in SPSM.