Improving effectiveness of Agile development

Software projects are mostly based on human labor. This causes significant variance and uncertainty in software project planning as human labor is very hard to predict. This article represents a new approach to resource allocation in software development projects that will be demonstrated using software development methodology called "Agile." The reason we selected this methodology is because "Agile" is already considered to be the most effective way of project management in software [1]; therefore, if we can enhance resource allocation efficiently in Agile projects then it could be done in all software projects where Agile is applicable, Agile software development has evolved in the past two decades into a set of tools for developing software. It is based on "all at once" models that assume that the creation of software is done by simultaneously working on requirements, analysis, design, coding, and testing, then delivering the entire system all at once. Agile main principle is using an iterative and incremental approach to building software. In Agile practice most of the responsibility is on the hands of the team members that need to estimate the work within iteration and commit to it. In order to accomplish this today, team members use their experience, educated advice, and some rules of thumb. We believe that especially in this stressed environment with almost "microscopic" work assignments, there should be a simple and fast mathematical model that assists them in this task. The model should handle dynamic environments and risky situations. This paper presents such a model, called HRA, and demonstrate in on a simple but representative real scenario.