Robust solutions for the software project scheduling problem: a preliminary analysis (Q2256915)

Summary: The software project scheduling problem relates to the decision of who does what during a software project lifetime. This problem has a capital importance for software companies. In the software project scheduling problem, the total budget and human resources involved in software development must be optimally managed in order to end up with a successful project. Two are the main objectives identified in this problem: minimising the project cost and minimising its makespan. However, some of the parameters of the problem are subject to unforeseen changes. In particular, the cost of the tasks of a software project is one of the most varying parameters, since it is related to estimations of the productivity of employees. In this paper, we modify the formulation of the original bi-objective problem to add two new objectives that account for the robustness of the solutions to changes in the problem parameters. We address 36 instances of this optimisation problem using four state-of-the-art metaheuristic algorithms and compare the solutions with those of the original non-robust bi-objective problem.