A Multi-attribute Decision Making Approach for Resource Allocation in Software Projects

For most software companies, the production of reliable software within the planned time schedule is of paramount importance. Many times, inadequate resource allocation can lead to high costs and low quality in software products. Hence, it is critical to put in place well-planned processes for personnel assignment that take into consideration the skill sets of the personnel with the objective of reducing costs and training time as well as increasing product quality. To this end, this paper presents a novel methodology that considers multiple project-specific skills for assigning human resources to software projects. This methodology takes into account the existing capabilities of personnel to determine the best fit based on the required skills for the task. Because personnel selection is essentially an imprecise task, this methodology uses fuzzy sets to represent the problem of personnel assignment as a fuzzy multi-attribute decision problem. This problem is solved by ranking personnel candidates based on the expected value operator of fuzzy numbers. A sample case study is used to show the methodology’s capabilities.