Task Allocation in Distributed Software Development Aided by Verbal Decision Analysis

Abstract

One of the most critical activities in distributed project management is the allocation of tasks among remote teams. In distributed software development projects, to allocate a task for a team in any of the locations, the project manager needs consider several factors such as team maturity and time zone difference among the sites. Deciding which task to allocate for each team constitutes a decision-making task. This decision is usually made subjectively. The verbal decision analysis is an approach based on solving problems through multi-criteria qualitative analysis, which means it considers the analysis of subjective criteria. This paper describes the application of a verbal decision analysis methodology called ORCLASS to classify the most relevant factors that the project managers should take into account when allocating tasks in distributed software development projects.

Applying Verbal Decision Analysis to Task Allocation in Distributed Development of Software

“…The criteria values were ordered from the most preferable value to the least preferable one. As result of this step, we got the list of criteria and criteria values for the problem of selecting the most important factors to be considered in task allocation in DDS projects, which is listed next [33]:…”

“…We then selected the value of the criterion that had the greatest number of choices to represent the alternative. Table 2 [33] We emphasize that the various answers given by professionals, considering they have experienced project managers, were related to the fact that they have different professional backgrounds. Thereby, the characterization of a particular factor was based on answers given by most professionals.…”

What Drives and Sustains Self-Assignment in Agile Teams

“…A study of global software development teams found that project managers consider task size, autonomy, expertise, and variety of work when allocating tasks to developers [21]. Another study found that managers consider business expertise and the developer's technical knowledge when allocating tasks in global software development [35].…”