A Decision Support Tool for Software Project Management

This paper describes work undertaken within the context of the P3 (Project and Process Prompter) Project which aims to develop the Prompter tool, a “decision-support tool to assist in the planning and managing of a software project”. Prompter will have the ability to help software project managers to assimilate best practice and ‘know how’ in the field of software project management and incorporate expert critiquing which will assist project managers in solving the complex problems associated with software project management. This ‘know how’ and best practice are encapsulated in distributed intelligent agents that act as advisors helping users at every stage of the software process. Each agent is an expert in a particular area of software project management and continually analyses project parameters making the user aware of any possible weakness, and helping to mitigate the associated risks. The agents will use their expertise to prompt the user to choose between suggested alternatives, as well as providing justification for their advice. The agents are contained in an agent library, which can be used in two main contexts: in a client server mode across a LAN; and in distributed mode across the Internet.