A reinforced hungarian algorithm for task allocation in global software development

Abstract

The allocation of software development tasks is a critical management activity in distributed development projects. One of the most important problem is to find the lowest-cost way to assign tasks in global software development, which can be solved by Hungarian algorithm. However, the original Hungarian algorithm only assume that a task can only be solved by one development site. The assumption is not agreed with the actual case where a software development task is usually be solved through a collaboration among several sites. To address such an issue, this paper proposes a reinforced Hungarian algorithm (RHA) for task assignment in global software development. RHA consists of three major stages. First, RHA transforms a n×m cost matrix into two n×n cost matrix by adding (2n-m) virtual development sites. Second, RHA performs the original Hungarian algorithm on the two n×n cost matrix to get the optimal assignment results. Finally, RHA removes the (2n-m) virtual development sites and gets the final optimal assignment result for m tasks. Simulation results indicate that RHA is a viable approach for the task assignment problem in global software development.