Search-based software project management

Abstract

Project management presents the manager with a complex set of related optimisation problems. Decisions made can more profoundly affect the outcome of a project than any other activity. In the chapter, we provide an overview of Search-Based Software Project Management, in which search-based software engineering (SBSE) is applied to problems in software project management. We show how SBSE has been used to attack the problems of staffing, scheduling, risk, and effort estimation. SBSE can help to solve the optimisation problems the manager faces, but it can also yield insight. SBSE therefore provides both decision making and decision support. We provide a comprehensive survey of search-based software project management and give directions for the development of this subfield of SBSE.