A project management support tool using communication for agile software development

Recently, agile software development methods are popular because software should be developed in a short period. However, conventional project management techniques are often not adaptable to such new development methodologies. Especially, progress and quality control of the document-based management does not fit the agile software development. Therefore, a new project management support tool has been developed based on a new communication model. The new model focuses on relationships between communication and project states. The basic idea of the model is that good communication leads to high quality products and good progress of projects. Based on scattering ratio of communication on time series, the tool can calculate project state as a whole. From results of trial experiments, we confirmed that the strong correlation coefficient between the scattering ratios of communication and the product qualities. Furthermore, the tool was applied to open source projects. The projects´ features were clarified in communication analysis using the tool.