Title: An integrated approach to software project management

Authors: Padmanav Acharya, Srikar Velichety

Addresses: Indian Institute of Information Technology and Management (IIITM), Morena Link Road, Gwalior 474003, Madhya Pradesh, India. ' G-601, Roystonea, Subject Matter Expert (Amdocs), Magarpatta City, Hadapsar, Pune 411028, Maharastra, India

Abstract: Project management techniques in the software industry have gained paramount importance. Traditional project management techniques like PERT/critical path method have proved to be inadequate because of the need for concurrent work scheduling and dynamic rework processes in IT projects. System dynamics (SD) modelling proved to be valuable in this context. Over the past two decades, many researchers had made successful attempts in this direction. But because of the very fact of being a continuous time modelling technique, SD fails to give the activity wise scheduling of the software project. In this paper, an integrated approach has been proposed which combines PERT and SD to derive the benefits from both the approaches.

Keywords: system dynamics; PERT; programme evaluation; project evaluation; review techniques; CPM; critical path method; supervisory modules; discrete time modelling; continuous time modelling; experienced staff; new staff; productivity; project management; software industry; concurrent scheduling; work scheduling; dynamic processes; rework processes; ICT; information technology; communications technology; activity wise scheduling; business; systems research.

DOI: 10.1504/IJBSR.2011.042096

International Journal of Business and Systems Research, 2011 Vol.5 No.5, pp.494 - 510

Published online: 18 Apr 2015 *

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