Andy M. Connor and Amit Shah, Auckland University of Technology, New Zealand

This research is focused on solving problems in the area of software project management using metaheuristic search algorithmsand as such is research in the field of search based software engineering. The main aim of this research is to evaluate the performance of different metaheuristic search techniques in resource allocation and scheduling problemsthat would be typical of software development projects.This paper reports a set of experiments which evaluate the performance of three algorithms, namely simulated annealing, tabu search and genetic algorithms. The experimental results indicate thatall of themetaheuristics search techniques can be used to solve problems in resource allocation and scheduling within a software project. Finally, a comparative analysis suggests that overall the genetic algorithm had performed better than simulated annealing and tabu search.

Evolutionary Computing, Genetic Algorithms, Simulated Annealing, Tabu Search, Resource Allocation, Scheduling, Project Management, Search Based Software Engineering