A Decision Support System to Recommend Telework Tools and Procedures for Software Engineering

The COVID-19 pandemic has drastically reshaped the global software engineering sector, accelerating a shift to virtual and remote work environments. This study examines this industry, which has seen its workforce become more diverse with various cultures, time zones, genders, ages, and languages. Managing such a varied group remotely poses significant challenges. To tackle these issues, a Decision Support System (DSS) designed for software project managers in remote settings was introduced. The system helps choose the right software management processes and tools, tailored to the specific needs of each project and team. The recommendations are based on literature reviews, ensuring they are grounded in the current best practices. The knowledge extracted from the literature was engineering into production rules for the DSS. The latter uses a web-based survey to gather essential project and team data and makes suitable recommendations. Project managers who utilized the DSS generally had positive expectations for the DSS recommendations, appreciating its potential to improve decision-making in tool and processes selection. They found recommendations useful and trustworthy. However, they expressed concerns about the time it takes them to understand and implement the DSS suggestions. They sometimes need to learn about the suggested tools which needs time and energy. Given the small size of the initial sample, Bootstrap statistical analysis was used to enhance the reliability of our findings.