Integrated system approach to improving the efficiency of IT projects management based on evolutionary modeling A.A.Zakharova1, K.V.Zakharchenkov2, Yu.V.Vaynilovich2 zaa@tu-bryansk.ru, zaharchenkovkv@mail.ru, Ylia.v@tut.by 1 Bryansk State Technical University, Bryansk, Russia 2 Inter-State Educational Institution of Higher Education «Belarusian-Russian University», Mogilev, Belarus The concept of improving the efficiency of IT projects management is proposed, based on an integrated system approach to IT projects management and implementing a rational choice of parameters of the IT projects management system. The described approach provides integrated information processing and support for management decision-making at all stages of the IT project implementation. The integrated system approach to improving the efficiency of IT projects management involves the development of new algorithms for forming structure and composition of project teams and distribution of project team participants to project tasks using evolutionary modeling. The advantage of the proposed approach is the ability to quickly respond to changes in the parameters of internal processes of an IT project and an external environment. The proposed approach was tested when creating the corporate information system of “SMIT-Yartsevo” LLC. The application of the proposed approach at “SMIT-Yartsevo” LLC ensured the reduction in the labor intensity and timing of the implementation of the main stages of the project to create the corporate information system by increasing the efficiency of managing the formation of project teams and the distribution of tasks among project team participants. Keywords: IT projects management, evolutionary modeling, project team, project tasks. competencies of project participants are not taken into 1. Introduction account. The IT projects management system is an active The above approaches ensure the improvement of system [1, 2], the conceptual model of which can be project management efficiency by managing the described by the following parameters: personal qualities, composition of project team participants. knowledge, skills of project team participants, structure Budyl'skiy A.V. explores the problem of distribution and composition of project teams, structure and of resources among project tasks and replacing them [7]. composition of project tasks, project management Antonova A. S. and Burkova I. V. develop new methods and technologies. approaches to planning business processes and project Approaches to improving the efficiency of IT projects work. Project management efficiency is improved by management can affect any of the listed parameters of the creating new planning methods [8, 9]. IT project model. An analysis of existing approaches to improving the IT project management, in accordance with the Agile efficiency of IT projects management showed that methodology [3], has the following specific features: efficiency is achieved by optimizing certain aspects of the − significant influence of personal and psychological IT projects management task and there are no integrated qualities of project team participants on the system approaches that implement a rational choice of effectiveness of project tasks solution; parameters of the IT projects management system, − the need to constantly change the composition and providing integrated information processing and support structure of project tasks depending on changes in for management decision-making at all stages of the customer requirements; project implementation. The developed concept implies a transition from − the constant change in customer requirements improving the efficiency of IT projects management by necessitates the use of flexible development improving the efficiency of solving individual tasks to an methodologies that allow dynamic redistribution of integrated increase in the efficiency of IT projects tasks between performers in the project management based on a set of interconnected methods. implementation process. The main advantage of the proposed concept is its Prihozhy A. A., Zhdanouski A. M. proposed to flexibility: the ability to quickly and efficiently respond to increase the efficiency of IT projects management by both external (changing customer requirements) and optimizing development teams by evaluating their internal (project team composition) changes. professional competencies taking into account the The proposed concept provides solving the scientific requirements for a specific project [4]. problem of increasing efficiency of IT projects For optimal distribution of applicant programmers in management using SADT methodology, cluster analysis, the team in order to improve the quality of IT projects COCOMO II method [10] (modified on the basis of implementation, Ostroukh E.N. offers an approach based T. Saati’s paired comparison method), the method of on a combination of the classical model of resource expert estimates [11], evolutionary modeling algorithms allocation, the Bee Colony algorithm, the Belbin R.M. [12, 13], and multilevel quality control of project tasks Team Roles Theory and the accounting of professional solving. qualities [5]. Artemov O. V. approaches the formation of teams from the position of socionics: the presence of leadership relationships, role composition [6]. The professional Copyright © 2020 for this paper by its authors. Use permitted under Creative Commons License Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) 2. Theoretical foundations of IT projects dynamically configuring the parameters of management concept based on evolutionary evolutionary modeling algorithms. modeling Improvement of IT projects management efficiency, in accordance with the proposed concept, is carried out by The concept of improving the efficiency of IT projects means of an integrated system approach to IT projects management is based on further development of the Agile management that includes the formation of project teams software development management methodology [3], and the distribution of IT project participants for tasks further development of methods for building project teams using evolutionary modeling algorithms and multilevel that comprehensively take into account behavioral and quality control of solving project tasks. professional competencies [14, 15], of methods for The distinctive features of the presented concept of allocating resources to project tasks with the purpose to improving the efficiency of IT projects management are: improve the efficiency of IT projects management with the 1. an integrated system approach to improving the adaptation of evolutionary modeling algorithms to solve efficiency of IT projects management using modified these problems, and the methodology of structural evolutionary modeling algorithms to support decision- analysis, labor cost estimation. making in the process of: The proposed concept is based on the following − synthesizing the composition and structure of project principles: teams, taking into account the behavioral and 1. an integrated approach to the synthesis of the structure professional competencies of candidates for and composition of project teams, combining the participation in projects; accounting of behavioral [14, 15] and professional competencies of candidates for participation in the − synthesizing the structure and composition of project implementation of the project using evolutionary tasks and allocating project team participants to tasks modeling algorithms in combination with COCOMO taking into account professional competencies. The II method and T. Saati’s paired comparison method degree of competencies ownership is determined based with the adjustment of algorithms parameters when on the results of a multilevel assessment of the quality changing system and external environment parameters; of solving project tasks; 2. synthesis of the composition and structure of the 2. integrated processing of information on the personal project tasks taking into account the integrated and psychological qualities of project participants, processing of information on the distribution of project labor intensity and complexity of solving project tasks team participants for tasks by adapting evolutionary to reduce the number of iterations using adaptive modeling algorithms in combination with COCOMO evolutionary modeling algorithms that allows ensuring II method and the T. Saati’s paired comparison method the fastest and most efficient formation of project to solve this task; teams and the distribution of participants in IT project 3. an integrated support for decision-making at each step teams to tasks. of the IT project implementation when changing A structural diagram of the concept of improving the system (composition and structure of participants) and efficiency of IT projects management based on adaptive external (composition and structure of tasks) factors by evolutionary modeling algorithms is presented in Fig. 1. IT projects management system IT projects Integrated processing of participants information about the results of the personal-psychological Results of Integrated processing List of tasks requiring qualities analysis and the the project of information improvement results of each project participants' on the results of solving participant's work work project tasks Results of an integrated analysis Rational composition and of the personal-psychological Synthesis of the structure of project tasks qualities and the results of each composition and structure participant's work of project tasks Integrated support for Synthesis of the decision-making on the Estimated labor intensity and composition and structure distribution of project time to solve project tasks of project teams participants to tasks Rational composition, Rational allocation of project structure and parameters team participants to tasks of project teams Improving the Improving the efficiency of Improving the effectiveness of project managing the distribution of List of tasks effectiveness of multilevel teams formation IT project participants to to be quality control for solving List of management tasks project tasks Results monitored tasks of project for IT IT projects tasks projects solution Fig. 1. A structural diagram of the concept of improving the efficiency of IT projects management based on adaptive evolutionary modeling algorithms Management of IT-project as socio-economic system The objective function of the task of improving the IT involves dynamic change of parameters of control projects management efficiency processes when parameters of internal processes of IT- 𝑃𝑃𝑃𝑃𝑃𝑃𝑃𝑃𝑃𝑃𝑃𝑃 = 𝐸𝐸𝐸𝐸𝐸𝐸𝐸𝐸𝐸𝐸(𝑇𝑇𝑇𝑇𝑇𝑇𝑇𝑇, 𝑃𝑃𝑃𝑃𝑃𝑃𝑃𝑃𝑃𝑃𝑃𝑃𝑃𝑃𝑃𝑃𝑃𝑃𝑃𝑃𝑃𝑃𝑃𝑃) → 𝑚𝑚𝑚𝑚𝑚𝑚, (5) project and parameters of external environment change. In where 𝑃𝑃𝑃𝑃𝑃𝑃𝑃𝑃𝑃𝑃𝑃𝑃 is the IT project labor intensity. accordance with the proposed concept, improving the The use of evolutionary modeling makes it possible to efficiency of IT projects management is provided by select the values of IT projects parameters that reduce configuring the parameters of evolutionary modeling labor intensity. algorithms in the process of implementing IT projects, depending on changes in the internal parameters of the IT 4. Improving the efficiency of managing the project processes and external environment parameters. formation of the structure and composition Improving efficiency by applying new approaches to of IT projects teams solving IT projects management tasks is carried out at the The process of forming a project team is the task of following stages of project implementation: the formation selecting project team participants taking into account of project teams, the distribution of project team their personal and psychological qualities, qualifications participants to tasks, multilevel quality control of tasks and specialization. solving. The scheme of the project team formation management To solve the problems of forming project teams and process is shown in fig. 2. distributing project team participants to tasks in the The team composition is considered rational if it management of IT projects, algorithms have been provides the greatest efficiency in terms of project developed to improve the efficiency of management based implementation in the opinion of the project manager, as a on evolutionary modeling, providing the possibility of decision-maker. In the process of evolutionary modeling, implementing the main principles and features of the several variants of the composition of project teams are proposed concept. The developed algorithms are formed. When deciding on the composition of the project implemented in a software complex for multilevel IT team, the project manager can take into account a number projects management [16]. of factors that cannot be taken into account in the process of evolutionary modeling. 3. Formalization of the posing of the task of The features of the proposed scheme of the process of improving the IT projects management controlling the formation of the structure and composition efficiency of project teams are listed below. In accordance with the proposed concept, the IT 1. Integrated processing of information about project project is characterized by the following set: teams participants based on the analysis of personal ITproject = 〈Tasks, Participants〉, (1) and psychological qualities using methods of cluster where 𝑇𝑇𝑇𝑇𝑇𝑇𝑇𝑇𝑇𝑇 – the set of project tasks, 𝑃𝑃𝑃𝑃𝑃𝑃𝑃𝑃𝑃𝑃𝑃𝑃𝑃𝑃𝑃𝑃𝑃𝑃𝑃𝑃𝑃𝑃𝑃𝑃 analysis, of knowledge, skills and abilities of project – the set of project teams participants. teams participants by applying methods of processing Each project task is characterized by the following set: the results of solving project tasks. Pre-processing of Task = 〈Priority, TechTask , ComplexityTask , PUFD 〉, (2) information accelerates the work of evolutionary where 𝑃𝑃𝑃𝑃𝑃𝑃𝑃𝑃𝑃𝑃𝑃𝑃𝑃𝑃𝑃𝑃 is the priority of the task, 𝑇𝑇𝑇𝑇𝑇𝑇ℎ 𝑇𝑇𝑇𝑇𝑇𝑇𝑇𝑇 is modeling algorithms. technologies and tools used, 𝐶𝐶𝐶𝐶𝐶𝐶𝐶𝐶𝐶𝐶𝐶𝐶𝐶𝐶𝐶𝐶𝐶𝐶𝐶𝐶𝑇𝑇𝑇𝑇𝑇𝑇𝑇𝑇 is the 2. Synthesis of the rational composition and structure of complexity of the task, 𝑃𝑃𝑈𝑈𝑈𝑈𝑈𝑈 is the probability of detecting project teams based on evolutionary modeling with the errors by the user. formation of a system of restrictions due to the The participants of project teams are characterized by specifics of IT projects, in the process of configuring the following set: the parameters of evolutionary modeling algorithms in Participant = 〈LevelTech , Experience〉, (3) combination with the use of COCOMO II method and where 𝐿𝐿𝐿𝐿𝐿𝐿𝐿𝐿𝐿𝐿 𝑇𝑇𝑇𝑇𝑇𝑇ℎ is the level of knowledge of T. Saati’s paired comparison method by for estimation technologies and tools, 𝐸𝐸𝐸𝐸𝐸𝐸𝐸𝐸𝐸𝐸𝐸𝐸𝐸𝐸𝐸𝐸𝐸𝐸𝐸𝐸 is experience with of project labor intensity. technologies and tools. The proposed scheme of the process of controlling the Quality function for solving project tasks: formation of the structure and composition of IT project PUserDefect = UserFindDefect → min, (4) teams provides integrated processing of information about AllFindDefects candidates for participation in projects and increases the where 𝑈𝑈𝑈𝑈𝑈𝑈𝑈𝑈𝑈𝑈𝑈𝑈𝑈𝑈𝑈𝑈𝑈𝑈𝑈𝑈𝑈𝑈𝑈𝑈𝑈𝑈𝑈𝑈𝑈𝑈 is the number of errors in effectiveness of management decisions when forming the program detected by users; 𝐴𝐴𝐴𝐴𝐴𝐴𝐴𝐴𝐴𝐴𝐴𝐴𝐴𝐴𝐴𝐴𝐴𝐴𝐴𝐴𝐴𝐴𝐴𝐴𝐴𝐴𝐴𝐴 is the project teams by the decision-maker. total number of errors in the program detected during the program operation. [Введите текст] [Введите текст] [Введите текст] Results of psychological tests of project participants Composition and structure of project tasks Preliminary integrated processing of Integrated processing of information on project teams information about the personal- participants based on cluster analysis Evaluation of project labor psychological qualities of to accelerate the work of evolutionary intensity based on the projects participants based on modeling algorithms COCOMO II method the results of psychological tests Synthesis of the composition and Ranking projects Integrated processing of structure of project teams based on by priority based on the information on the results evolutionary modeling algorithms T. Saati method of solving tasks by each project participant Evaluation of teams composition and Saving the solution structure by the decision-maker No Is the team Yes Results of multilevel control of solving IT composition rational? Composition and projects tasks structure of project teams Fig. 2. Scheme of the process of managing the formation of the structure and composition of IT projects teams Saati’s paired comparison method to evaluate the 5. Improving the efficiency of managing the complexity of tasks. The proposed information distribution of IT projects teams participants processing procedure provides a comprehensive to tasks assessment of the feasibility of decomposing project The process of managing the distribution of IT projects tasks into subtasks in terms of the labor intensity of IT teams participants to tasks involves determining the projects as a whole. The results obtained are the initial composition and structure of project tasks, taking into data for evolutionary modeling algorithms used in the account the rational distribution of project team participants distribution of participants in IT projects teams to tasks. to tasks. 2. Distribution of projects teams participants to tasks using The scheme for solving the problem is shown in Fig. 3. evolutionary modeling algorithms with the formation of The features of the proposed scheme of the process of a system of restrictions due to the specifics of IT managing the distribution of projects teams participants to projects, in the process of configuring the parameters of tasks are listed below. evolutionary modeling algorithms. The proposed 1. Integrated information processing in the synthesis scheme of the process for managing the allocating of IT process the composition and structure of project projects teams participants to tasks provides integrated tasks using SADT methodology for decomposing the information processing and improves the efficiency of task into subtasks, COCOMO II method for estimation management decisions when forming the composition of the project labor intensity in combination with T. and structure of project tasks, assigning of IT projects teams participants to tasks. [Введите текст] [Введите текст] [Введите текст] Saving the received Composition and solution structure of project tasks Yes No Selecting a next Distribution rational task to decompose Decomposing a task into subtasks based on SADT methodology Evaluation by the No decision-maker of distribution of project Estimation of the level of complexity teams participants of tasks based on T. Saati method Multilevel control to tasks before and after decomposition Are all tasks Yes of the solution of considered? project tasks Allocation based on Evaluation of the project's labor intensity evolutionary modeling based on COCOMO II method before and algorithms of project after task decomposition teams participants to tasks Results of multilevel control of solving IT Yes Does labor intensity No projects tasks decrease? Composition and structure of project teams Fig. 3. Scheme of the process for managing the allocating of IT projects teams participants to tasks 6. Approbation of the proposed approach while the creation of the CIS of “SMIT-Yartsevo” LLC was the improving the efficiency of projects automation of management processes adapted to the management for the creation of corporate business processes of the enterprise. During the information systems development of the system, the algorithms of management processes implemented in the CIS were optimized from The proposed approach to improving the efficiency of the point of view of production and economic indicators of IT projects management was implemented when creating the enterprise. the corporate information system (CIS) of “SMIT- Multilevel testing of CIS modules was performed by Yartsevo” LLC. The purpose of the IT project was to employees and heads of structural divisions of “SMIT- improve the efficiency of management processes through Yartsevo” LLC. Based on the results of the assessment of automation. In the process of automation, a preliminary the quality of work, the project manager was made assessment of the effectiveness of algorithms for planning decisions to change the composition of the project team processes in the CIS and a rational choice of algorithms’ participants. parameters were carried out [17]. The development of the CIS of “SMIT-Yartsevo” LLC To implement the project to create the CIS in made it possible to ensure an annual increase in sales of accordance with the proposed integrated system approach, products by 20%, reduce the number of products not the project manager formed a team of developers. When completed by the time they were launched into production forming the team, in addition to professional by 50%, and reduce the number of orders that were not competencies, the personal and psychological qualities of completed on time by 80%. the developers were taken into account. The estimated economic effect obtained by applying The composition and structure of the project tasks the proposed integrated system approach to improving the corresponded to the classic functionality of the ERP efficiency of IT project management in combination with system. In the CIS of “SMIT-Yartsevo” LLC were integrated production automation amounted to about 4 implemented product specification processes in a million Russian rubles (the estimated economic effect specialized pricing module, sales and production planning, confirmed by the act of implementation). demand management, material requirements planning, material supply planning. Each task of the development of 7. Conclusion CIS has been decomposed into subtasks. The composition and structure of the tasks was optimized in terms of The new concept of improving the efficiency of IT minimizing the labor intensity and time of the project project management is proposed, based on the integrated implementation. COCOMO II method was used to assess system approach to IT project management, including the the labor intensity of tasks solving. formation of the structure and composition of project Traditional approaches to the implementation of CIS teams and the distribution of project team participants to are aimed at changing the business processes of the project tasks using evolutionary modeling algorithms. enterprise to adapt to one of the standard CIS As a result of applying the proposed concept of configurations. A distinctive feature of the IT project for improving management efficiency in the implementation of educational IT projects [19], in addition to reducing the labor intensity of project implementation, significant CIT&DS 2017, Communications in Computer and improvement of quality indicators of training of IT- Information Science, Vol. 754, Springer specialists was noted [19]. 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