Software Development Business Research Articles

ОСНОВНЫЕ ТЕНДЕНЦИИ РАЗВИТИЯ ЛОГИСТИКИ В РОССИИ И ЗА РУБЕЖОМ: СРАВНИТЕЛЬНЫЙ АНАЛИЗ

The article describes the most priority direc-tions of development of Russian and interna-tional logistics. The article considers peculi-arities of logistics in the Russian Federation, which determine the main vectors of devel-opment. These include business software development, route maintenance, growth in online commerce, and growing digitalization. Examples of national logistics companies implementing the considered ways of devel-opment in practice are given. Trends in the development of foreign logistics have been identified. These include the creation of transport alliances, the increasing role of outsourcing and logistics operators, and the minimization of environmental risks. The reasons of differences and similarities in the directions of development of Russian and foreign logistics are described. Recommen-dations to Russian logistics companies to improve efficiency and gain a competitive advantage have been presented.

CONVENIENT SOFTWARE FOR BUSINESS WITH THE POSSIBILITY OF ADAPTATION TO MARKET REQUIREMENTS

To support day-to-day operations, business companies need flexible systems that will allow them to adapt to the markets that are changing quite quickly in today’s environment. However, most of the software that exists in the market does not meet the needs of a particular company, let alone adapt to the requirements that change very quickly. Software for supporting enterprises, intended mainly for solving specific tasks. The question arises about the possibility of simplifying the development of business software, without limitations, and also being able to create custom software specifically for business, not only for use, but also for further adaptation. In business-companies, there is a need to transmit external inspection data to laboratories, as well as the possible collection of these results and combining them into research reports, which contain the results of checks on the quality and quantity of manufactured products. Usually, in order to perform such actions, it is customary for companies to use standard office programs and paper records that will allow you to conduct reviews and create various reports. In such cases, it becomes necessary to enter the same data many times in several documents. Companies are trying to find applications that can reduce such overhead and prevent errors. Since there are no existing solutions to support such activities, there is a need to create such supporting software. The task is to develop a method called “administration generation” capable of introducing a level of abstraction to reduce repetitive tasks during development. Using the Apache open-source web-server, which allows customization for a specific business-company, and the Eclipse multipurpose integrated development environment (IDE), which supports multiple development languages, including PHP and JavaScript, this method was implemented. It used the fully pluggable Symfony PHP framework combined with the highly flexible Ext JS JavaScript framework. Symfony allows you to implement the right “administrative generation” property and extensibility to meet the right current market requirements. Ext JS is currently integrating to improve the user experience. Both the first and the second are known for their excellent documentation and active community.

A flexible framework for requirement management (FFRM) from software architecture toward distributed agile framework

Abstract GSD is a Global software development environment where data are distributed to more than two sites. These sites may be located on national or continental borders. Every year it expands its development volume, which has become a trend for the software development business. Because of increasing demand, it has become a common type of business. The value of offshore software development has increased immensely. According to the recent predictions, one-quarter of US software-related business shifts offshore, including integration and management-related services. GSD helps explore resources from other countries, increasing knowledge and enhancing operational efficiency. Therefore, globalization has changed the development nature of software. Different organizations face several challenges, such as coordination and requirement ambiguity, during the change management process in GSD. Traceability accommodates these changes in forward and backward direction. However, it gives rise to several challenges like less client involvement because of its distributed nature and challenging to manage the requirement ambiguity due to increased cost. Therefore, the Flexible Framework for Requirement Management (FFRM) must handle the abovementioned issues.

A Spiking Neural Network Builder for Systematic Data-to-Model Workflow.

In building biological neural network models, it is crucial to efficiently convert diverse anatomical and physiological data into parameters of neurons and synapses and to systematically estimate unknown parameters in reference to experimental observations. Web-based tools for systematic model building can improve the transparency and reproducibility of computational models and can facilitate collaborative model building, validation, and evolution. Here, we present a framework to support collaborative data-driven development of spiking neural network (SNN) models based on the Entity-Relationship (ER) data description commonly used in large-scale business software development. We organize all data attributes, including species, brain regions, neuron types, projections, neuron models, and references as tables and relations within a database management system (DBMS) and provide GUI interfaces for data registration and visualization. This allows a robust “business-oriented” data representation that supports collaborative model building and traceability of source information for every detail of a model. We tested this data-to-model framework in cortical and striatal network models by successfully combining data from papers with existing neuron and synapse models and by generating NEST simulation codes for various network sizes. Our framework also helps to check data integrity and consistency and data comparisons across species. The framework enables the modeling of any region of the brain and is being deployed to support the integration of anatomical and physiological datasets from the brain/MINDS project for systematic SNN modeling of the marmoset brain.

Software Cost Estimation in Global Software Development Business: A Review of Models and Cost Drivers for Economical Business

Global Software Development (GSD) has grown in popularity as important tool for ensuring the efficient use of resources in internationally distributed environments across multiple geographical locations for business. The most prominent features of GSD are lowering costs, speeding up growth, and gaining access to talented developers all over the world. However, there are a number of drawbacks that result from the distance between development teams including coordination and communication causing the hidden business costs involved in development process. In the context of GSD, it is necessary to focus on economic cost estimation models as estimating the needed resources and effort remains a difficult task. Software cost estimation has become a critical factor in determining software development effectiveness economically. There are many cost estimating models, including algorithmic, non-algorithmic, and hybrid for business development environment. Over the last decade, several studies have focused on economic cost estimate in GSD. To the best of our understanding, current cost estimation techniques/models do not take into account all the additional business cost drivers that are necessary to calculate accurate cost estimation in the GSD context. In this paper we present a comparative analysis of economic software cost estimation techniques along with cost divers used in GSD context. This paper summarizes the additional cost drivers in GSD and discusses open research topics in economic cost estimation in GSD based on the results review of the associated literature.

An Empirical Investigation of the Impact of the Communication and Employee Motivation on the Project Success Using Agile Framework and Its Effect on the Software Development Business

Throughout the years, project management has evolved tremendously. As technological innovations occur, project management framework also evolved. As the project management framework evolved, project success became more and more difficult. This article examines the impact of communication and employee motivation on the success of the project and evaluates the impact on the software development business. Even though there is a considerable amount of research being conducted on project success, the communication and employee motivation attribute still lack research, especially in the field of software development. The data gathered through this research were empirically tested using SPSS, and a significant relationship was observed between the dependent and the independent variables. It was found out that communication and employee motivation indeed play a role in the success of the project. It is crucial to train employees in an agile framework and keep on motivating them so that they can deal with the continuous changes. The results of this research indicated that organizations should implement a proper communication channel between the customers and the development team. Furthermore, the more the employees are motivated, the more chances the project will have on success, making the business profitable.

Health Care and Cybersecurity: A Bibliometric Analysis of the Literature

Background: Over the past decade, clinical care has become globally dependent on information technology. The cybersecurity of healthcare information systems is now an essential component of safe, reliable, and effective healthcare delivery. Objectives: The objective of this study is to provide an overview of the literature at the intersection of cybersecurity and healthcare delivery. Methods: A comprehensive search was conducted using PubMed and Web of Science (WoS) for English-language peer-reviewed articles. We carried out chronological analysis, domain clustering analysis, and text analysis of the included articles to generate a high-level concept map composed of specific words and the connections between them. Results: Our final sample included 472 English-language journal articles. Our review results revealed that the majority of articles are focused on technology: Technology-focused articles made up more than half of all the clusters, while only 32% were managerial. This focus on the technological aspects of cybersecurity suggests that non-technological variables (human-based and organizational aspects, strategy and management) may be understudied. Also, software development security, business continuity, and disaster recovery planning each accounted for 3% of the studied articles. Our results also show that physical security is lacking in research, with only 1% of the literature being categorized as such. Cyber vulnerabilities are not all digital. Many physical threats contribute to breaches, and these threats potentially affect the physical safety of patients. Conclusions: Our results revealed an overall increase in research in this area, and identified major gaps and opportunities for future work.

Analiza potreba zaposlovnim informatičarima na tržištu radne snage Srbije

The main subject of the paper is the analysis of the needs for business informatics specialists at the labor market of Serbia. The analysis was conducted by collecting data from both relevant national sources (National Employment Service, Statistical Office of the Republic of Serbia and others) and international sources (Eurostat, World Economic Forum and others). One part of the analysis was based on the data collected from the survey conducted by the authors of the paper at the Faculty of Economics, University of Belgrade. The essential part of the survey was focused on the interest of students at the first year of studies for the new module called Business informatics. One of the main conclusions of the analysis is that the business component of IT is becoming more popular with growing demand. Therefore, changes in the field of higher education concerning business informatics programs are necessary in order to fulfill demand at the Serbian labor market. Finally, it was revealed that the number of companies involved in the development of business software has lately significantly increased in Serbia. These companies have an additional need for a substantial number of IT professionals who have both high economic (business) and IT education.

LINGUISTIC PECULIARITIES OF SOFTWARE LOCALIZATION

The article is devoted to the analysis of linguistic aspects of software localization. The relevance of the presented research is determined by the fact that localization, being situated at the junction of rapidly developing computer technologies and modern translation technologies, has become an important factor in the success of the software development business in different languages all over the world. At the same moment, localization, as an important element of the information culture of a student of the linguistics, focused on translation activity, is just beginning to be introduced into their educational process. The article demonstrates the results of the study. The peculiarities of a localization translation are revealed. The methods of work of a group of translators with a web of the original language and several target languages are shown. The language differences in the language pairs (English-Russian and EnglishFrench) in texts related to the software have been clarified. The directions of usage of the obtained results in the educational process (during lessons of technical translation, in the development of a computer practical work, in the implementation of training projects for localization) are proposed.

Business knowledge requirements and onsite offshore work division in Indian software outsourcing projects

Purpose – The purpose of the paper is to find out the knowledge requirements and its effect on both onsite and offshore project work division for development, re-engineering and maintenance projects in Indian outsourcing software industry in different phases of software development. Design/methodology/approach – This study employs an expert interview approach in Indian software industry to find out knowledge requirement for project execution and division of work between onsite and offshore locations. The requisite data were collected through expert interviews and direct observations. Findings – The study found that the development projects require higher level of domain, strategic, business process and operation process knowledge in comparison to re-engineering and maintenance projects. So there is a need of higher onsite presence in development projects. The maintenance work is taken up at the offshore location in a phase-wise manner. Research limitations/implications – The implication of the study is in the development of a broad framework of knowledge requirements and work division in on-shore and offshore locations for Indian software outsourcing projects. As the study is based on expert opinion in the context of India, it cannot be generalized for outsourcing scenarios elsewhere. Practical implications – The software project manager can use the findings to get more insight into the project and divide the software team between onsite and offshore location. Originality/value – The study is novel, as there is little attempt at finding the knowledge requirement to execute various kinds of business software development in outsourcing environment in the context of India.

Applying a Macroergonomic Approach to The Design and Analysis of Business Software

Business software is often seen as more of a nuisance to employees than an aid to more efficient work practices. Many companies are working toward improving this unfortunate phenomenon by attempting to improve the user experience (UX) of business software. This paper proposes that expanding beyond the UX perspective with a macroergonomic approach can improve both the research and design phases of business software development, ultimately providing a more complete picture of the UX by placing more emphasis on the context of use. Toward that end, we present here a preliminary application of macroergonomics to one business software project. First, we present an overview of business software. Then, a macroergonomics approach is defined and the potential value for business software is discussed. Next, we present an example of using macroergonomic principles on a project and the lessons learned during this exercise. Finally, we discuss what we’re doing to further expand upon this concept of applying macroergonomic principles to the design and analysis of business software.

Competing values in software process improvement: a study of cultural profiles

PurposeThe purpose of the article is to investigate the impact of organizational culture on software process improvement (SPI). Is cultural congruence between an organization and an adopted process model required? How can the level of congruence between an organizational culture and the values and assumptions underlying an adopted process model be assessed?Design/methodology/approachThe competing values framework and its associated assessment instrument are used in a case study to establish an organizational culture profile of a software development business unit within the case company. The instrument is supplemented with a technique to produce culture profiles of texts such as process models like the Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) and the case company's quality management system. The different profiles are subsequently analyzed and compared.FindingsThe culture profile of the CMMI confirms previous research and depicts a result‐oriented, formalized, and structured organization. A comparison with the company's quality management system shows congruent culture profiles suggesting that the case company has succeeded in capturing underlying assumptions of the CMMI when updating the quality management system. The analysis also reveals the organizational culture profile of the business unit to be incongruent with the quality management system's profile. This disconfirms previous research claiming that congruence is a prerequisite. Further analysis reveals that actions were taken by managers in the case company to address the cultural challenges and successfully implement new processes. It is, therefore, concluded that cultural incongruence is not an insurmountable barrier to SPI. By comparing cultural profiles, some SPI implementation challenges become evident and that in turn allows for effective SPI management action.Research limitations/implicationsThe research is based on a single case study and that is sufficient to disconfirm existing research. Additional research is, however, needed to validate both the proposed text analysis technique as well as the proposed process for assessing and managing cultural challenges confronting SPI projects.Practical implicationsSPI managers are provided with a more complex view of organizational culture in which congruence is not a necessity. SPI managers can choose to compare culture profiles and decide how to address incongruences. To that end the text analysis technique is offered as a web service that allows for analysis of all text‐based process models and standards, and of internal process documentation.Originality/valueThe proposed culture management process, including the text analysis technique, is a cost‐efficient approach to analyzing and providing the basis for managing cultural challenges during SPI in a specific company. The process provides understanding and guidance in dealing with the specific challenges faced by software companies during SPI.

A Risk Assessment Tool Using a CMMI Quantitative Approach

 Abstract—A notable purpose of offshoring is to gain competitive advantages in software development business. While offshoring offers great opportunities, it also creates a new trend of threats in software development due to differences in culture, languages, time zones, and development processes deployed. Maximizing the profits of the offshoring relies on strong remote project management skills including remote risk analysis. It is important that potential risks should be detected promptly and there should be quantitative indicators that can help to precisely monitor risks in a remote manner. In that view, we present an offshoring risk assessment tool which uses our formally defined CMMI quantitative approach. This tool is implemented on IBM JAZZ platform to enable quantitative risk monitoring and assessment for application life cycle support.

Testing a model of the antecedents and consequences of IT employees trust of software development business in Thailand

Although the research of trust in leadership has increasingly gain attention in past two decades, existing research do not provide a sufficiently clear picture of the relationships among trust in different leadership referents and its antecedents and consequences. To fill this gap, this study aim to test the relationships among different dimensions of organizational justices, which are treated as the antecedents, trust in two leadership referents (supervisor and organization), and three work-related outcomes (innovative goal commitment, organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs) and in-role performance). Our hypotheses are tested on data collected from 157 information technology (IT) employees of software development companies in Thailand. Linear structural relations (LISREL) results revealed that procedural and distributive justices positively affect trust in organization, whereas the interactional justice positively affects trust in supervisor.The innovative goal commitment and OCBs are the proximal outcomes, while the in-role performance is the distal outcome of trust in organization. In contrast, trust in supervisor has no direct impact on all outcomes variables, but it has an indirect effect through trust in organization. Discussion and recommendation are presented. Key words: Organizational justice, trust in leadership, innovative goal commitment, organizational citizenship behaviors, in-role performance.

Establishment of "A-PPNS", A Navigation System for Regenerating the Software Development Business

Currently, knowledge within the field of software development is largely implicit and is not formally disseminated and shared. This means that there is little improvement and regeneration of processes, and knowledge gained from previous projects is not necessarily applied to new ones. In order to turn this situation around it is necessary to take an organized approach to sharing job-related information. For this study, the authors constructed "Amalab-Project Planning Navigation System, or A-PPNS", a system for organizing accumulated knowledge related to the field of software development. More specifically, A-PPNS is a business process monitoring system and consists of the following four elements: (i) Optimized estimate support subsystem, (ii) Schedule monitoring system, (iii) QCD optimization diagnostic system, and (iv) Strategic technology accumulation system. The effectiveness of this system has been demonstrated and verified at Company A, a system integration company.

Experience report

I describe the initial attempt of experienced business software developers with minimal functional programming background to write a non-trivial, business-critical application entirely in Haskell. Some parts of the application domain are well suited to a mathematically-oriented language; others are more typically done in languages such as C++. I discuss the advantages and difficulties of Haskell in these circumstances, with a particular focus on issues that commercial developers find important but that may receive less attention from the academic community. I conclude that, while academic implementations of "advanced" programming languages arguably may lag somewhat behind implementations of commercial languages in certain ways important to businesses, this appears relatively easy to fix, and that the other advantages that they offer make them a good, albeit long-term, investment for companies where effective IT implementation can offer a crucial advantage to success.

SIMPLE AND EFFECTIVE C++ MATRIX–VECTOR LIBRARY FOR NONPROFESSIONALS IN COMPUTER SCIENCE

This paper presents a matrix–vector computational library written in the C++ language. Effective matrix–vector manipulation is an essential aspect of scientific numerical modeling, especially while using the finite element method. Even though there are a lot of matrix libraries written in C++ which are freely or commercially available on the Internet, most of them are either too complicated or too simple, i.e. with very limited capabilities. Therefore, the main idea is to develop a reliable matrix library, as part of the computer code in C++, which will be, at the same time, as simple as possible and as complex as possible. Consequently, the basic motto of the library, which is called SMV++, is "Simple and effective" and it is meant to be of use to researchers dedicated to reliable obtained results and not to the "beauty of programming." The library is developed without use of the template concept and inheritance, with the purpose of understanding it easily and of extending it easily with new possibilities and algorithms. Last but not least, it is aimed at having a simple and intuitive user interface. The bottom line is that the SMV++ is not meant to be of use to someone who is in the software development business. Rather, it is oriented to the user who has a modest programming knowledge (e.g. a Ph.D. student) and who is basically concerned about how to obtain the solution to the considered problem, for which he has to do some "homemade programming," because the available commercial software cannot be applied for all of his/her needs. Consequently, as mentioned, the motto of the library is "Simple and effective"; the effectiveness is in the sense of complexity of possibilities, rather than computational efficiency. However, if one is forced to choose between the two in the development of the library, having in mind the target users, priority is given to simplicity of use.

HCI and theology

Introduction: I’m Doing What? Why on earth would I want to consider pursuing a research degree in human-computer interaction (HCI)? That is a good question that I still do not have a good answer to, but my choice seems to come out of my educational and life experience. I started fairly traditionally by getting a computing degree and then going out to work. For the last 20+ years, I have been working in the software development business, in a range of roles and organizations. In a number of these roles, a common theme emerged—that I was writing applications for people who were not always computer literate. It also became clear that many of the computer applications that I was involved in had negative effects on many people—it put them out of a job, it made their job different, or, often, they would be reduced to a computer operative, with many of their skills replaced by a computer. As the computer business changed and more applications moved toward PCs, the situation became worse. As computer applications became far more common, more people who did not understand computers were forced to use them—but the application design, in terms of how they interacted with people, did not change. In fact, I remember one occasion where I was being encouraged to design applications in a way that mirrored mainframe, menu-driven tools, rather than designing a more appropriate interactive interface. These applications made people who knew their jobs perfectly well feel stupid simply because they could not appreciate the computer applications that they were expected to use. And, to be honest, many of the applications were rubbish. Partly due to my frustration at this inattention to the needs of the user, I began studying again. I followed my interest in theology and eventually obtained a degree in that as well. Because I did this in my own time, there was a necessity to integrate what I was learning about with the world in which I was involved. To a significant degree, this meant that I needed to understand my work designing applications from a theological perspective; I needed to be able to see my work from the view of how it matched my growing theological understanding, especially relating to how God, the world, and people interacted. While this proved a challenge, it was also an interesting challenge that helped me both in my studies and in my work. Most significantly, I learned not to define myself by my work, because who I am is far more than just relating to the job. The job—the career even—is just one aspect of me and needs to appropriately integrate into the other aspects. My theological studies helped me see more about not only God, but also people.

Becoming a Security Expert

Anyone involved in the software industry should learn a few facts and skills that relate to software security. A small number of skills exist that anyone in the software development business can learn to improve software security. Whether you're a developer, architect, or tester, it's important that you understand the nature of the constantly evolving security landscape and build defenses into applications at the design phase, never trust input, and then verify that the input handling is robust in the face of intentionally malformed data. Knowing these skills and applying them will lead to more secure software.

Dynamic Optimization of Software Enhancement Effort

As the competition in the software development business grows fiercer, the features provided in the software become more and more important. With the growing popularity of open source software and the advent of new software delivery models, such as software-as-a-service, the traditional software vendors cannot compete on price in the long run. Therefore, they need to compete by increasing the number of features provided to customers. Moreover, the new entrants and the open source software vendors also need to provide increased number of features continuously in order to penetrate the market. Hence, these software firms need to invest judiciously in the software enhancement effort such that their revenue is maximized at the minimum possible cost. In addition, this strategy should be dynamic in order to capture the dynamic nature of the market. Therefore, we propose a dynamic optimization approach to obtain the optimal software enhancement effort over time. In this paper, we consider the value of adding more features as well as the impact of more bugs introduced while adding new features. Most of the past literature ignore the fact that the value of adding more features is not realized immediately by users. Therefore, we consider that there is a lag between the addition of new features and the increase in system's value. We also present several interesting managerial insights that can be used by software vendors to efficiently allocate resources based on the values of related parameters.