A bilevel whale optimization algorithm for risk management scheduling of information technology projects considering outsourcing

Information Technology (IT) outsourcing can help enterprises to improve their core competitiveness and save costs. But the schedule risk in IT outsourcing process may bring huge losses. Based on the theory of distributed decision making (DDM), a bi-level multi-objective schedule risk management model is established with considering the project schedule risk and risk management cost. In addition, a bi-level Whale Optimization Algorithm (BiWOA) is designed to solve the problem and compared with the original whale optimization algorithm (WOA) and the moth–flame​ optimization (MFO). Three numerical examples are designed to test the effectiveness of the model. And the analysis of results show that it can effectively control the schedule risks of IT outsourcing projects. The influence of different preference degree of the client on the decision result is also analyzed. The effectiveness of bi-level whale optimization algorithm is proved by solving and analyzing the numerical examples. It demonstrated that bi-level whale optimization algorithm is more competitive with higher accuracy and the ability to escape from local optima and can solve the problem more effectively.