Optimal Allocation of Effort to Software Maintenance: A Queuing Theory Approach

Production and Operations Management, Vol. 18, No. 5, pp. 506-515, 2009

10 Pages Posted: 30 Jan 2008 Last revised: 18 Oct 2011

See all articles by V. G. Kulkarni

V. G. Kulkarni

University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill

Subodha Kumar

Temple University - Fox School of Business

Vijay Mookerjee

University of Texas at Dallas - Naveen Jindal School of Management

Suresh Sethi

University of Texas at Dallas - Naveen Jindal School of Management

Date Written: October 27, 2008

Abstract

We develop variations of the M|G|1 queue to model the process of software maintenance within organizations and use these models to compute the optimal allocation of resources to software maintenance. User requests are assumed to arrive following a Poisson process and a binomial distribution is used to model duplication of requests. We obtain expressions for expected queue lengths with an exponential server using an N-policy for an integer N≥1. We also obtain the optimal batching size and mean service rate by minimizing the total cost consisting of the cost of the server, the cost of waiting, and the fixed cost of maintenance, if applicable.

Keywords: MG1, software maintenance, Queuing Theory, N-policy, batching, resource allocation

JEL Classification: M10, C61

Suggested Citation

Kulkarni, V. G. and Kumar, Subodha and Mookerjee, Vijay and Sethi, Suresh, Optimal Allocation of Effort to Software Maintenance: A Queuing Theory Approach (October 27, 2008). Production and Operations Management, Vol. 18, No. 5, pp. 506-515, 2009, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1087585

V. G. Kulkarni

University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill ( email )

102 Ridge Road
Chapel Hill, NC NC 27514
United States

Subodha Kumar

Temple University - Fox School of Business ( email )

Philadelphia, PA 19122-____
United States

HOME PAGE: http://sites.temple.edu/subodha/

Vijay Mookerjee

University of Texas at Dallas - Naveen Jindal School of Management ( email )

P.O. Box 830688
Richardson, TX 75083-0688
United States

Suresh Sethi (Contact Author)

University of Texas at Dallas - Naveen Jindal School of Management ( email )

800 W. Campbell Road, SM30
Richardson, TX 75080-3021
United States

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