A Little Help can Be A Bad Thing: Anchoring and Adjustment in Adaptive Query Reuse

The anchoring and adjustment heuristic has been shown to be a pervasive technique that people use in judgment, decision-making, and problem-solving tasks to reduce cognitive burden. However, reliance on the anchoring heuristic often leads to a systematic adjustment bias, in which people fail to make sufficient adjustments for a particular task. In a study involving 157 subjects from six universities, we examined the effect of this bias on SQL query formulation under varying levels of domain familiarity. Subjects were asked to formulate SQL queries to respond to six information requests in a familiar domain and six information requests in an unfamiliar domain. For some, subjects were also provided with sample queries that answered similar information requests. To adequately adjust a sample query, a subject needed to make both surface-structure modifications that required little cognitive effort and deep-structure modifications that required substantially more cognitive effort. We found that reuse can lead to poorer quality query results and greater overconfidence in the correctness of results. We also show that the strength of the adjustment bias depends on domain familiarity. This study demonstrates that anchoring and adjustment extends to an important area in information systems use that has not been previously studied. We also expand the notion of anchoring and adjustment to include the role of domain familiarity

Reusable framework for web application development

Web application (WA) is among the mainstream enterprise-level software solutions. One of the reasons for this trend was due to the presence of Web application framework (WAF) that in many ways has helped web developer to implement WA as an enterprise system. However, there are complexity issues faced by the developers when using existing WAFs as reported by the developers themselves. This study is proposed to find a solution to this particular issue by investigating generic issues that arise when developers utilize Web as a platform to deliver enterprise-level application. The investigation involves the identification of problems and challenges imposed by the architecture and technology of the Web itself, study of software engineering (SE) knowledge adaptation for WA development, determination of factors that contribute to the complexity of WAF implementation, and study of existing solutions for WA development proposed by previous works. To better understand the real issues faced by the developers, handson experiment was conducted through development testing performed on selected WAFs. A new highly reusable WAF is proposed, which is derived from the experience of developing several WAs case studies guided by the theoretical and technical knowledge previously established in the study. The proposed WAF was quantitatively and statistically evaluated in terms of its reusability and usability to gain insight into the complexity of the development approach proposed by the WAF. Reuse analysis results demonstrated that the proposed WAF has exceeded the minimum target of 75% reuse at both the component and system levels while the usability study results showed that almost all (15 out of 16) of the questionnaire items used to measure users’ attitudes towards the WAF were rated at least moderately by the respondents

Analysis of the effects of software reuse on customer satisfaction in an RPG Environment

This paper reports on empirical research based on two software products. The research goal is to ascertain the impact of the adoption of a reuse policy on customer satisfaction. The results show that when a systematic reuse policy is implemented, such as the adoption of a domain specific library: reuse is significantly positively correlated with customer satisfaction; and there is a significant increase in customer satisfaction. The results have been extended to the underlying populations, supposed normal

Modellgestützte Prozessverbesserung: Entwicklung einer wiederverwendungsorientierten Methode zur durchgängigen Unterstützung der Modellerstellung, -transformation und -nutzung im Rahmen der Prozessverbesserung

Die Gestaltung betrieblicher Prozesse stellt heute einen wichtigen Wettbewerbsfaktor dar. Um am Markt erfolgreich agieren zu können, ist es notwendig, die eigenen Prozesse konsequent an den Bedürfnissen der Kunden auszurichten. Methoden der Prozessverbesserung beschreiben, welche Schritte hierfür durchzuführen sind. Modelle stellen dabei ein wesentliches Werkzeug für die Visualisierung der betrieblichen Abläufe dar. Gleichwohl wird in bestehenden Methoden der Prozessverbesserung nur unzureichend auf die systematische Nutzung und Wiederverwendung von Modellen eingegangen. Dadurch klafft eine Lücke zwischen erwartetem und tatsächlichem Nutzen des Modelleinsatzes im Rahmen der Prozessverbesserung. So wird insbesondere die methodische Nutzung und Auswertung von Modellen bisher entweder gar nicht oder lediglich isoliert von der Prozessverbesserung betrachtet. Damit existiert zwar eine Vielzahl an methodischen Puzzleteilen, eine durchgängige Unterstützung der Modellerstellung und -nutzung im Rahmen der Prozessverbesserung kann jedoch nicht erkannt werden. Die vorliegende Arbeit stellt sich diesem methodischen Defizit und beschreibt Schritt für Schritt, wie die Verwendung von Modellen im Rahmen der Prozessverbesserung systematisiert werden kann. Damit soll die Nutzung von Modellen im betrieblichen Alltag forciert und der Aufwand für die Modellierung langfristig reduziert werden