Problems in modeling the software development process as an adventure game

Abstract

SESAM (Software Engineering Simulation by Animated Models) is a simulator for practicing the role of a software project manager. Its long term goal is to provide a tool for training CS students. As a research project, SESAM calls for an integrated model of the software development process, reflecting and quantifying many phenomena observed in real software projects. We are currently using the second prototype, which can already demonstrate some rational behaviour. More important, however, were our observations in the process of constructing SESAM. They shed light on the current state of software engineering, and on the applicability of metrics. SESAM is being developed in an evolutionary style by the Software Engineering Department (Lehrstuhl) at Stuttgart University; it is implemented in Smalltalk-80 on Unix-Workstations. This paper concentrates on the fundamental questions raised by the work on SESAM. A more complete description of our work has been published before.