51,597 research outputs found

    Supporting Defect Causal Analysis in Practice with Cross-Company Data on Causes of Requirements Engineering Problems

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    [Context] Defect Causal Analysis (DCA) represents an efficient practice to improve software processes. While knowledge on cause-effect relations is helpful to support DCA, collecting cause-effect data may require significant effort and time. [Goal] We propose and evaluate a new DCA approach that uses cross-company data to support the practical application of DCA. [Method] We collected cross-company data on causes of requirements engineering problems from 74 Brazilian organizations and built a Bayesian network. Our DCA approach uses the diagnostic inference of the Bayesian network to support DCA sessions. We evaluated our approach by applying a model for technology transfer to industry and conducted three consecutive evaluations: (i) in academia, (ii) with industry representatives of the Fraunhofer Project Center at UFBA, and (iii) in an industrial case study at the Brazilian National Development Bank (BNDES). [Results] We received positive feedback in all three evaluations and the cross-company data was considered helpful for determining main causes. [Conclusions] Our results strengthen our confidence in that supporting DCA with cross-company data is promising and should be further investigated.Comment: 10 pages, 8 figures, accepted for the 39th International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE'17

    Perceived Effects of Prevalent Errors in Contract Documents on Construction Projects

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    One of the highly rated causes of poor performance is errors in contract documents. The objectives of this study are to investigate the prevalent errors in contract documents and their effects on construction projects. Questionnaire survey and 51 case study projects (mixed method) were adopted for the study. The study also involved the use of Delphi technique to extract the possible errors that may be contained in contract documents; it did not however constitute the empirical data for the study. The sample of the study consists of 985 consulting and 275 contracting firms that engaged in the construction of building projects that were completed between 2013 and 2016 and were above the ground floor. The two-stage stratified random sampling technique was adopted for the study. The data for the study were analysed with descriptive and inferential statistics (based on Shapiro-Wilk’s test). The results of the study indicate that errors in contract documents were moderately prevalent. However, overmeasurement in bill of quantities was prevalent in private, institutional and management procured projects. Traditionally procured projects contain 68% of the errors in contract documents among the procurement methods. Drawings contain the highest number of errors, followed by bill of quantities and specifications. The severe effects of errors in contract documents were structural collapse, deterioration of buildings and contractors’ claims among others. The result of the study implies that, management procurement method is the route to error minimization in developing countries, but it may need to be backed by law and guarded against overmeasurement

    A project management quality cost information system for the construction industry

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    A prototype Project Management Quality Cost System (PROMQACS) was developed to determine quality costs in construction projects. The structure and information requirements that are needed to provide a classification system of quality costs were identified and discussed. The developed system was tested and implemented in two case study construction projects to determine the information and management issues needed to develop PROMQACS into a software program. In addition, the system was used to determine the cost and causes of rework that occurred in the projects. It is suggested that project participants can use the information in PROMQACS to identify shortcomings in their project-related activities and therefore take the appropriate action to improve their management practices in future projects. The benefits and limitations of PROMQACS are identified

    The simulation of action disorganisation in complex activities of daily living

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    Action selection in everyday goal-directed tasks of moderate complexity is known to be subject to breakdown following extensive frontal brain injury. A model of action selection in such tasks is presented and used to explore three hypotheses concerning the origins of action disorganisation: that it is a consequence of reduced top-down excitation within a hierarchical action schema network coupled with increased bottom-up triggering of schemas from environmental sources, that it is a more general disturbance of schema activation modelled by excessive noise in the schema network, and that it results from a general disturbance of the triggering of schemas by object representations. Results suggest that the action disorganisation syndrome is best accounted for by a general disturbance to schema activation, while altering the balance between top-down and bottom-up activation provides an account of a related disorder - utilisation behaviour. It is further suggested that ideational apraxia (which may result from lesions to left temporoparietal areas and which has similar behavioural consequences to action disorganisation syndrome on tasks of moderate complexity) is a consequence of a generalised disturbance of the triggering of schemas by object representations. Several predictions regarding differences between action disorganisation syndrome and ideational apraxia that follow from this interpretation are detailed

    Can the Heinrich ratio be used to predict harm from medication errors?

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    The purpose of this study was to establish whether, for medication errors, there exists a fixed Heinrich ratio between the number of incidents which did not result in harm, the number that caused minor harm, and the number that caused serious harm. If this were the case then it would be very useful in estimating any changes in harm following an intervention. Serious harm resulting from medication errors is relatively rare, so it can take a great deal of time and resource to detect a significant change. If the Heinrich ratio exists for medication errors, then it would be possible, and far easier, to measure the much more frequent number of incidents that did not result in harm and the extent to which they changed following an intervention; any reduction in harm could be extrapolated from this
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