Abstract
Most firms always have various business projects, i.e. project portfolio. If delay or cost excess is occurred in a project, a project manager has to take countermeasures by taking account situations of other projects. It is however difficult even for an experienced manager to take effective countermeasures for each project simultaneously, because resources, such as manpower, funding, and equipments, are restricted. In this paper, we consider an agent model to forecast future profits of software development projects by mimicking the decision making of project managers. First, we estimate duration of the delay using input items written in a check list of each project. Then the probability density function of future profit is forecasted at the time of order entry by allocating resources, in order to minimizing duration of the delay and amount of the excess cost. Finally, a usage of the contingency reserve calculated as an average of negative part of the probability density function of future profit is proposed.
