Dynamics of concurrent software development

摘要

In aconcurrent development process differentreleasesofasoftwareproductoverlap. Organizations involved in concurrent software development not only experiencethe dynamics common to single projects, but also face interactions between different releases of their product: they share resources among different stages of different projects, including customer support, they have a common code base and architecture that carries problems across releases, they use the same capabilities, and their market success in early releases impacts their resources in later ones. Drawing on two case studies we discuss some of the feedback processes central to concurrent software development and build a simple simulation model to analyze the resulting dynamics. This model sheds light on tipping dynamics, the nature of inter-project feedback loops, and alternative resource allocation policies relevant to management of concurrent software development.