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Simulation model of the software construction process

Software production has become one of the largest industries in the world economy today, and in terms of key indicators growth rates in recent years it ranks first among all major industries. In conditions of significantly limited availability of software solutions from foreign manufacturers, the supply from domestic software manufacturers is increasing and, as a result, the need for models and methods that allow you to control the software development process, guarantee the cost of development, timing and quality of the result. The uniqueness of the industry does not allow us to count on the success of using traditional project management models in software projects, especially with regard to quantitative assessments of project parameters. The main differences from other types of project management are that the result of a software development project is intangible, the technologies used in the project change rapidly, and the experience of managing a separate software development project is often not applicable to other projects. The fundamental difference between software development projects and other complex projects is related to the features of the key stage – software construction, including coding and debugging, as well as verification, modular and integration testing. Errors made at the software construction stage have the most significant impact on the project result, since they increase the initially planned amount of work. In the known models of the software development process, the amount of work is considered initially specified, and the construction stage is not allocated as a separate circuit determine the stochastic nature of the work amount. The goal of this paper is to build a simulation model of the software construction process, taking into account the dependencies according to which the main parameters of the simulated process change over time. The model provides an opportunity to quantify and optimize project parameters according to a selected criterion (one or more). The model is built within the framework of a system-dynamic approach; the AnyLogic system is used as a simulation environment. The results of simulation experiments are presented to demonstrate the possibility of using the proposed model to study the software construction process or as a mechanism to support managerial decision-making. Read more...