GOAL DRIVEN ITERATIVE SOFTWARE PROJECT MANAGEMENT

Iterative development has gained popularity in the software industry notably in the development of enterprise applications where requirements and needs are difficult to express for the users and business processes difficult to understand by analysts. Such a software development life cycle is nevertheless often used in an ad-hoc manner. Even when templates such as the Unified Process are furnished, poor documentation is provided on how to breakdown the project into manageable units and to plan their development. This paper defines a template for agent-oriented iterative development as well as a software project management framework to plan the project iterations. The agent paradigm is used at analysis level with actors' goals considered as piecing elements, an iterative template is proposed for planning purpose. High-level risk and quality issues focus on prioritizing the project goals so that each element's "criticality" can be evaluated and a model-driven schedule of the overall software project can be set up. The software process is illustrated with the development of a production planning system for a steel industry.