ARGO: Improvement of Processes for Decision-Making in Software Engineering Project Management TIC2001-1143-C03

Abstract

This coordinated project develops, studies and researches into several key activities for software engineering project management. The final goal is to provide the project manager with a set of guides and procedures for carrying out a scientific decision making in software engineering projects. In this project, we deal with a wide range of management activities from an integrative viewpoint, including both initial phases of the software life cycle (estimation, simulation and planning) and others implemented at the end of the life cycle (software testing, process assessment, post-mortem analysis, etc.). Besides that, and by using experimental design, we study several aspects of the UML modelling and the software maintenance phase. In the area of cost estimation, we intend to improve the estimation process by applying metaheuristics algorithms, simulation and data mining. The combination of these techniques tries to overcome the problem of the lack of data at the beginning of the project and to increase the reliability of the predictions. We validate different behaviours in a software development project with project databases (simulated, actual, commercial). By using data mining, we synthesize the management rules more useful for software project management. In the software testing phase we assess, by means of metaheuristics, the testing strategies that are economically efficient. The main issue addressed in software testing is test case generation, both for imperative programs and non imperative (SQL and databases). In the area of process assessment, we look at the effectivity of the last international proposals (ISO-SPICE) in software development firms. We use metaheuristics techniques and information visualization techniques as horizontal techniques, meaning that they will pervade the three subprojects. Since the process of decision making over all the life cycle requires of an information system that allows to collect and to use the data according to the needs, we will develop a system for data collection and for decision-making support. This decision support system will be parameterised specifically for our integrated monitoring of software projects