Planning and improving global software development process using simulation

Abstract

Global software development poses a number of challenges and difficulties as well as significant potential benefits. In order to be successful, companies need to adapt and improve their processes to support this kind of development. Strong project planning and management is also required. Software process simulation modeling has been used to address a variety of issues in software development projects ranging from strategic management, project planning and control, process improvement, to training and understanding. We believe that a hybrid simulation model combining system dynamics and discrete-event models is needed to effectively model global software development projects. In this paper, we describe such a model, and focus on the use of the model to support project planning and process improvement in global software development. Example questions/issues that can be addressed by our GSD model are provided, along with an illustrative application.