A Multi-criteria Decision Making Approach for Resource Allocation in Software Engineering

The completion of reliable software products within the expected time frame represents a major problem for companies that develop software applications. As the field grows, the software industry continues to struggle with delivering products in a timely manner. A major cause for increased cost and low quality in software products can be attributed to inadequate resource allocation. Therefore, it is important to develop systematic personnel assignment processes that consider the complete candidate skill set and provide the best fit to increase quality, reduce cost, and reduce training time. This paper presents a novel methodology that considers multiple project-specific skills to assign resources to software tasks. The methodology takes into account the existing capabilities of candidates to determine the best fit based on the required skills for the task. A sample case study is used to show the methodology´s capabilities.