Improving management effectiveness and overall performance of software development projects through a system dynamics approach

摘要

While existing research has mainly focused on project management’s static view, our work investigates the impacts udof projects’ structure and behavioural dynamics on their performance, with a specific focus on the influence of some udpeculiar development processes. A dynamic simulation model of a single phase project was built using the system uddynamics methodology. The model integrates several previously developed and tested project structures and adds a udseparate structure for the negotiation process. Simulations describe the behaviours generated by the interaction of udcustomized development processes in single-phase projects. Project performances are measured in terms of time, udquality and cost. Our research aims to show that development processes, as well as shared resource levelling udtechniques, significantly impact the dynamic behaviour of projects through the feedback, delays and nonlinear udrelationships which are usually omitted in traditional project management practice, as well as in methods, tools and udmodels, but are very important descriptors of project complexity. Expanding the models used to manage projects to udinclude dynamic features requires a change of focus by researchers and practitioners. The system dynamics udmethodology provides some of the tools for developing and implementing such an expansion in project models.