On multi agent based simulation of software development processes

The simulation of software development processes is gaining increasing interest within both academia and industry. The reasons for making this kind of simulations range from supporting strategic and operational management of software development projects to process improvement and understanding. Despite the fact that the process of developing software is performed by a set of cooperating individuals, most approaches to simulate this process are using a centralistic activity-based view rather than an individual-based view. It is possible to use both of these approaches for any particular simulation problem, but in most cases one of them is much more suitable than the other, and in many situation only one is practically feasible. In this paper we will investigate the applicability of Multi Agent Based Simulation (MABS) for simulating software development processes. The result is a set of general guidelines concerning when to use MABS as well as three concrete examples where MABS seem particularly promising.