Are Delayed Issues Harder to Resolve? Revisiting Cost-to-Fix of Defects throughout the Lifecycle

Many practitioners and academics believe in a delayed issue effect (DIE); i.e. the longer an issue lingers in the system, the more effort it requires to resolve. This belief is often used to justify major investments in new development processes that promise to retire more issues sooner. This paper tests for the delayed issue effect in 171 software projects conducted around the world in the period from 2006--2014. To the best of our knowledge, this is the largest study yet published on this effect. We found no evidence for the delayed issue effect; i.e. the effort to resolve issues in a later phase was not consistently or substantially greater than when issues were resolved soon after their introduction. This paper documents the above study and explores reasons for this mismatch between this common rule of thumb and empirical data. In summary, DIE is not some constant across all projects. Rather, DIE might be an historical relic that occurs intermittently only in certain kinds of projects. This is a significant result since it predicts that new development processes that promise to faster retire more issues will not have a guaranteed return on investment (depending on the context where applied), and that a long-held truth in software engineering should not be considered a global truism.Comment: 31 pages. Accepted with minor revisions to Journal of Empirical Software Engineering. Keywords: software economics, phase delay, cost to fi

Dynamic Common Agency, Vertical Integration, and Investment: The Economics of Movie Distribution

This paper analyzes the impact of vertical integration on investment and other strategies in a dynamic common agency framework. Movie distribution is used as a motivating example. The model matches several facts about movie distribution; distributors avoid head-to-head new hit releases, hits have longer runs than flops, and distributors receive the lion’s share of value generated by hits. Welfare comparisons show that integration is privately profitable and may improve social welfare even though it reduces industry profits. The e.ects of integration on strategies and welfare depend critically on how integration a.ects the bargaining power of the non-integrated firm.common agency; exclusive dealing; entertainment; film; licensing

Spend more today: Using behavioural economics to improve retirement expenditure decisions

This paper examines how behavioural economics can be used to improve the expenditure decisions of retirees. It identifies how accumulated assets can be used optimally throughout retirement to produce life-long income when required, to make provision for contingencies – such as unanticipated spikes in expenditure – and to optimize the size and timing of bequests. We do this using a SPEEDOMETER (or Spending Optimally Throughout Retirement) retirement expenditure plan which employs defaults within a choice architecture. At its simplest, the plan involves just four key behavioural nudges: (1) First, make a plan – ideally with, but if necessary without, an adviser; (2) automatic phasing of annuitization which is designed to tackle the aversion to large irreversible transactions and losing control of assets and so allows the greatest possible degree of flexibility in managing the run-down of retirement assets; (3) capital protection in the form of ‘money-back’ annuities which deals with loss aversion, i.e., the fear of losing your money if you die early; and (4) the slogan ‘spend more today’ which utilizes hyperbolic discounting to satisfy the human trait of wanting jam today and to reinforce the idea that ‘buying an annuity is a smart thing to do’.Behavioural economics; Retirement; Annuities

Conceptualizing the Co-Existence of Formal and Informal Institutions Within Planning

Conceptualizing the Co-Existence of Formal and Informal Institutions Within Planning Hazem Abu-Orf Faculty of Applied Engineering and Urban Planning, University of Palestine, Gaza, PalestineThe background to this study is addressing how formal and informal institutions might intersect in planning. This article has at its aim addressing not only the effects that formal and/or informal institutions have but also how both shape each other. In fulfilling this aim, analysis in this study adopts qualitative research methods, including qualitative interviewing, direct observation and archival records, which are applied to the Nicosia Master Plan that is considered in this study as a particular case study because it arguably helps this study to fulfill its aims. The perspective of formal/informal ‘dialectics’, marked by a ‘mutual-shaping’ exercise, is applied to this case study. Its application reveals several arguments as follow. First, formal institutions are found in this study to be blocked from mobilizing any development, however, remain the key determinant. The second argument concerns informal institutions that have been found to adopt strategies capable of mobilizing development, nevertheless, these strategies could not obviate the central role of formal institutions. Thirdly, formal institutions formalize informal institutions by ‘absorbing’ the latter into their hierarchy while equally denying any degree of autonomy, nor a role assigned, to informal institutions. Altogether, the findings revealed in this study stress the importance of the political and economic contexts of power that are key to how the formal/informal ‘dialectics’ occur.University of Palestine, www.up.edu.p

Taxonomic classification of planning decisions in health care: a review of the state of the art in OR/MS

We provide a structured overview of the typical decisions to be made in resource capacity planning and control in health care, and a review of relevant OR/MS articles for each planning decision. The contribution of this paper is twofold. First, to position the planning decisions, a taxonomy is presented. This taxonomy provides health care managers and OR/MS researchers with a method to identify, break down and classify planning and control decisions. Second, following the taxonomy, for six health care services, we provide an exhaustive specification of planning and control decisions in resource capacity planning and control. For each planning and control decision, we structurally review the key OR/MS articles and the OR/MS methods and techniques that are applied in the literature to support decision making

A capacity planning strategy based on optimal flexibility : a scenario based approach

http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/96931/1/MBA_PalleF_1997Final.pd

2017-18 VCU Faculty Handbook

The VCU Faculty Handbook contains information about the university, its campus and the surrounding community. The Handbook is not a complete guide to academics, research and other services, but is intended as a reference guide to orient new and continuing faculty to the university and provides additional sources for information. For detailed school or department information, please reach out to the specific departmental office. The VCU Office of Faculty Affairs is committed to updating the Handbook on a yearly basis

Agile Project Dynamics: A System Dynamics Investigation of Agile Software Development Methods

While Agile software development has many advocates, acceptance in the government and defense sectors has been limited. To address questions of meanings to the term “Agile,” we examine a range of Agile methods practiced and develop a framework of seven characteristics, which we call the Agile Genome. We gain insight into the dynamics of how Agile development compares to classic “waterfall” approaches by constructing a System Dynamics model for software projects. The Agile Project Dynamics (APD) model captures each of the Agile genes as a separate component of the model and allows experimentation with combinations of practices and management policies. Experimentation with the APD model is used to explore how different genes work in combination with one another to produce both positive and negative effects. The extensible design of the APD model provides the basis for further study of Agile methods and management practices