The Role of Software Models in Developing New Software Systems; A Case Study in Project Management

The collaboration process in a joint project with a Japanese company is introduced. Topics included are the role of software models at each phase of the joint project and the skill set model of the collaboration. We have developed a software project scheduling tool suited to the Japanese work environment. Through the joint project, models play a key role as an effective communication media between Academia and Industry. They are useful for: Problem-discovery and problem-setting; Abstraction of the real world to extract necessary information, organizing this data into a useful information structure; Construction of a mathematical model to assure the generalizability of the theory and the tool; Visualization of the organizational resource usage state and definitions of several metrics.