Simulation in Software Engineering with System Dynamics: A Case Study

Abstract

There are many complexities including dynamic behavior and feedback mechanism as well as various interacting factors in the practical software development. Software Engineering education is facing difficulties because students have limited engineering experience and they can hardly understand typical phenomena occurring in software projects. System Dynamics is a continuous modeling method describing the interaction between project factors. It forces one to consider system behavior in global view. The simulation models encapsulate collective knowledge of software engineering fields. They support the training that the students can interact with to practice project control, which will help students understand the key factors and behaviors in complex scenarios. In this paper, Brooks’ Law and the effects of Pair Programming in eXtreme Programming (XP) were used as case study to demonstrate the basic concepts, analysis and modeling processes of system dynamics. The simulation results show the advantages of the approach. Finally, the uses of system dynamics approach in critical areas of software engineering are presented.