Reassessing Brooks' law through consideration of manpower abilities

When software projects falls behind schedule, managers make any possible reactions to avoid any schedule slippage, mostly by adding new people to their projects. Adding more people to a late software project may cause negative impacts on the progress of the project as the result of assimilation time...

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Main Authors: Farshchi, Mostafa, Yah Jusoh, Yusmadi, Azmi Murad, Masrah Azrifah
Format: Conference or Workshop Item
Language:English
Published: 2011
Subjects:
Online Access:http://psasir.upm.edu.my/id/eprint/11722/1/ID%2011722.pdf
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author Farshchi, Mostafa
Yah Jusoh, Yusmadi
Azmi Murad, Masrah Azrifah
author_facet Farshchi, Mostafa
Yah Jusoh, Yusmadi
Azmi Murad, Masrah Azrifah
author_sort Farshchi, Mostafa
collection UPM
description When software projects falls behind schedule, managers make any possible reactions to avoid any schedule slippage, mostly by adding new people to their projects. Adding more people to a late software project may cause negative impacts on the progress of the project as the result of assimilation time, training overhead and communication overhead. Consequently, a project manager faces difficulties to make the decision whether to add new members to his team or not. Therefore, in this research we attempted to address the problem by understanding how software project managers can minimize the negative impacts of adding new people to delayed software projects. This research aims to explore the effects of adding manpower to a late software project through personnel factors trade-off analysis. Particularly, this study has the intention to examine whether a significant schedule improvement can be achieved with proper consideration of the new manpower capabilities, skills and experience. For fulfillment of this research, we built a system dynamics model to simulate the dynamic behavior of the project progress when new members added with different ranges of personnel capabilities. In addition, an example case study has been run and related simulation results are compared with previous models. The result of this study shows that significant schedule improvement of a late project can be achieved if people with certain level of capabilities are added to a project.
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spelling upm.eprints-117222015-01-06T03:17:08Z http://psasir.upm.edu.my/id/eprint/11722/ Reassessing Brooks' law through consideration of manpower abilities Farshchi, Mostafa Yah Jusoh, Yusmadi Azmi Murad, Masrah Azrifah When software projects falls behind schedule, managers make any possible reactions to avoid any schedule slippage, mostly by adding new people to their projects. Adding more people to a late software project may cause negative impacts on the progress of the project as the result of assimilation time, training overhead and communication overhead. Consequently, a project manager faces difficulties to make the decision whether to add new members to his team or not. Therefore, in this research we attempted to address the problem by understanding how software project managers can minimize the negative impacts of adding new people to delayed software projects. This research aims to explore the effects of adding manpower to a late software project through personnel factors trade-off analysis. Particularly, this study has the intention to examine whether a significant schedule improvement can be achieved with proper consideration of the new manpower capabilities, skills and experience. For fulfillment of this research, we built a system dynamics model to simulate the dynamic behavior of the project progress when new members added with different ranges of personnel capabilities. In addition, an example case study has been run and related simulation results are compared with previous models. The result of this study shows that significant schedule improvement of a late project can be achieved if people with certain level of capabilities are added to a project. 2011 Conference or Workshop Item NonPeerReviewed application/pdf en http://psasir.upm.edu.my/id/eprint/11722/1/ID%2011722.pdf Farshchi, Mostafa and Yah Jusoh, Yusmadi and Azmi Murad, Masrah Azrifah (2011) Reassessing Brooks' law through consideration of manpower abilities. In: IASTED International Conference Software Engieering (SE 2011), 15-17 Feb. 2011, Innsbruck, Austria. (pp. 199-204). Computer software - Human factors Project management - Case studies Personnel management
spellingShingle Computer software - Human factors
Project management - Case studies
Personnel management
Farshchi, Mostafa
Yah Jusoh, Yusmadi
Azmi Murad, Masrah Azrifah
Reassessing Brooks' law through consideration of manpower abilities
title Reassessing Brooks' law through consideration of manpower abilities
title_full Reassessing Brooks' law through consideration of manpower abilities
title_fullStr Reassessing Brooks' law through consideration of manpower abilities
title_full_unstemmed Reassessing Brooks' law through consideration of manpower abilities
title_short Reassessing Brooks' law through consideration of manpower abilities
title_sort reassessing brooks law through consideration of manpower abilities
topic Computer software - Human factors
Project management - Case studies
Personnel management
url http://psasir.upm.edu.my/id/eprint/11722/1/ID%2011722.pdf
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