Modeling software engineering projects as a business: A business intelligence perspective

Business managers are constantly under pressure to sustain their organizations´ competitiveness and to make sound agile decisions in volatile business environments. Business managers make use of business intelligence (BI) tools to assist them make intelligent decisions. Software project managers also need what can be called `project intelligence´ tools in order to deal with the continuously changing and complex software project environment which can be likened to a business environment. Based on this requirement, this research paper proposes that software projects be modeled as a business in order to apply a business intelligence model so as to develop `project intelligence´ tools for software projects. That is, the aim of this research paper is to propose `project intelligence´ tools which are modeled on business intelligence tools. The extension of BI tools to software projects follows from the premise that projects are business constructs through which a business is operated to create a sustainable stakeholder-value. The use of `project intelligence´ tools will enable a software project manager to gain a clear knowledge about factors that may affect project progress and such knowledge will enable quick and informed quality decision making processes which will ensure improved sustainable project performance.