In: Proc. 19th Int. Conf. on Software Engineering, 17-23 May 1997, Boston, MA, pages 293-302. 1997. ISBN 0-89791-914-9, ACM Order No. 592970, IEEE Catalog No. PR07816.
Abstract: This paper proposes a new model for software projects and an estimation method for the quality, cost and delivery date. The new model consists of project models and process model. Project model focuses on three key components: activity, product and developer of the project. Process model includes a set of activity models, each of which specifies design, coding, review, test, and debug activities, respectively, using GSPNs. Moreover, the new model can take the influence of human factors into account by introducing the concept of `workload'. Next, a simulator, which supports description of the target process, executes the process described by activity model and analyses the simulation results statistically. Then, the simulator is applied to real software projects at certain organization and the estimated values are compared with actual data. The experimental results show the applicability of the proposed simulator to manage real software projects in the future.
Keywords: project management, software processes, stochastic Petri nets.