On Project Quality Assurance under Requirement Volatility

Requirements of a project are found to change in various ways during the course of the same. The effects of varying magnitude of requirement volatility on different project parameters like effort, schedule, etc have been well investigated. However, there has been no analysis on how different ‘patterns’ of requirement volatility influence selection of project management approaches and the resultant effect on project performance. To address this exigency, here, using system dynamics modeling, we investigate the impact of different resource allocation strategies on project quality assurance activity under two experimental patterns of requirement volatility. Results indicate variations in quality metrics like error generation, error detection, quality assurance effort, depending upon how the two different requirement volatility patterns and resource allocation policies impact the project dynamics. These initial findings re-inforce the need to adopt pattern-dependent contextual project management approaches, and also pave the way for a detailed exploration to improve project performance.