An experimental investigation of the effects of software size increase on software project management behavior

Abstract

Increasing demand for software and increasing shortfalls of programmers have focused efforts to improve software project productivity on the role of the software project manager. The complex dynamics of software project development, and the "visibility" of the project, affect decision making and performance to a large degree. Using the System Dynamics Model for software project management, these and other issues can be evaluated with low financial risk or outlays through simulation of software projects. This thesis investigates the effect of changing one of the dynamics (i.e., size) on the behavior and performance of the project manager by using a simulation of an actual software project in a game environment. Analysis of the results indicates that increased visibility significantly improves project schedule.