A systematic methodology for developing discrete event simulation models of software development processes

So far there have been several efforts for developing software process simulators. However, the approaches for developing the simulators seem to have been ad-hoc and no systematic methodology exists. Since modeling and simulation in support of software development should become more popular (and there are signs that it does), there is a need for migrating modeling from craft to engineering. This article proposes such a systematic method, focused on the development of discrete simulation-based decision models, but extensible to other modeling approaches as well.