Measures related to social and human factors that influence productivity in software development teams

Software companies need to measure their productivity. Measures are useful indicators to evaluate processes, projects, products, and people who are part of software development teams. The results of these measurements are used to make decisions, manage projects, and improve software development and project management processes. This research is based on selecting a set of measures related to social and human factors (SHF) that influence productivity in software development teams and therefore in project management. This research was performed in three steps. In the first step, there was performed a tertiary literature review aimed to identify measures related to productivity. Then, the identified measures were submitted for its evaluation to project management experts and finally, the measures selected by the experts were mapped to the SHF. A set of 13 measures was identified and defined as a key input for designing improvement strategies. The measures have been compared to SHF to evaluate the development team\u27s performance from a more human context and to establish indicators in productivity improvement strategies of software projects. Although the number of productivity measures related to SHF is limited, it was possible to identify the measures used in both traditional and agile contexts

Female Under-Representation in Computing Education and Industry - A Survey of Issues and Interventions

This survey paper examines the issue of female under-representation in computing education and industry, which has been shown from empirical studies to be a problem for over two decades. While various measures and intervention strategies have been implemented to increase the interest of girls in computing education and industry, the level of success has been discouraging. The primary contribution of this paper is to provide an analysis of the extensive research work in this area. It outlines the progressive decline in female representation in computing education. It also presents the key arguments that attempt to explain the decline and intervention strategies. We conclude that there is a need to further explore strategies that will encourage young female learners to interact more with computer educational games

Innovation strategies, process and product innovations and growth: Firm-level evidence from Brazil.

Using World Bank ICS data from Brazilian manufacturing firms, this paper identifies innovation strategies of firms - in particular internal technology creation (make) and external technology acquisition (buy)- and their effect on successful process and product innovations. It also explores the importance of innovations for firm growth. Successful process and product innovations occur mostly through technology acquisition, mostly embodied in machinery and equipment, either alone or in combination with internal technology development. The option of only relying on internal development is less performing. The results indicate that innovative performance is an important driver for firm growth. It is particularly the combination of product and process innovations that significantly improves firm growth. Both innovation and growth performance are supported by access to finance. Skills of workforce and management matter, but not necessarily tertiary education levels. The impact of international linkages on innovative and growth performance is mixed.

The competitiveness of nations and implications for human development

This is the post-print version of the final paper published in Socio-Economic Planning Sciences. The published article is available from the link below. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. Copyright @ 2010 Elsevier B.V.Human development should be the ultimate objective of human activity, its aim being healthier, longer, and fuller lives. Thus, if the competitiveness of a nation is properly managed, enhanced human welfare should be the key expected consequence. The research described here explores the relationship between the competitiveness of a nation and its implications for human development. For this purpose, 45 countries were evaluated initially using data envelopment analysis. In this stage, global competitiveness indicators were taken as input variables with human development index indicators as output variables. Subsequently, an artificial neural network analysis was conducted to identify those factors having the greatest impact on efficiency scores

Contribución del comercio electrónico al desempeño de las PyMEs industriales: un modelo estructural

El rol que juegan las Tecnologías de la Información y comunicación (TIC) para lograr un mejor desempeño organizacional aún requiere de un análisis más profundo entre las pequeñas y medianas empresas (PyMEs) de los países en desarrollo. Este estudio pretende ampliar la literatura empírica sobre la relación entre TIC, comercio electrónico y desempeño de las PyMEs en países en desarrollo. Para alcanzar este objetivo, utilizamos una muestra de 87 empresas manufactureras de la ciudad de Bahia Blanca, Argentina correspondiente al año 2015. Mediante la estimación de un Modelo de ecuación estructura, se obtiene que la adopción del comercio electrónico posee una influencia positiva y significativa en las ventas de las PyMEs la cual es potenciada por el nivel de uso de las TIC. Otros factores organizacionales tales como el tamaño de la empresa y los programas públicos explican el desempeño, pero no son predictores significativos de la adopción del comercio electrónico.The role Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) play in achieving a better organizational performance still needs further analysis among small and medium sized enterprises (SME) from developing countries. This study aims to extend the empirical literature on the relationship between ICT, electronic commerce and SME performance in developing countries. To achieve this goal, we employ a sample of 87 manufacturing firms from the city of Bahía Blanca, Argentina in the year 2015. By estimating a structural equation model, we obtain that electronic commerce adoption has a positive and significant influence on SME sales which is reinforced by the level of ICT use. Other organizational factors such as firm size and public programs explain performance, but are not significant predictors of the electronic commerce adoption.Fil: Alderete, Maria Veronica. Universidad Nacional del Sur. Departamento de Economía; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Bahía Blanca. Instituto de Investigaciones Económicas y Sociales del Sur. Universidad Nacional del Sur. Departamento de Economía. Instituto de Investigaciones Económicas y Sociales del Sur; Argentin

The internationalization profiles of Portuguese SMEs

Given the (increasing) view point that firms’ internationalization strategy is the unique path to overcome the Portuguese dismissal economic growth, the present paper offers a comprehensive picture of the internationalization behavior of Portuguese SME, constituting therefore an important tool for political action. On the basis of the literature review and the factorial and cluster analyses performed, we propose three main segmentation criteria, one (‘Whole encompassing segmentation’: Experienced Medium Low-Tech firms; Low skill, Low-Tech firms; Young High-Tech firms) based on language skills, SME business experience, foreign market dependency, introduction of organizational innovation, exporting to ‘High income countries’ and education level of executive teams. The second segmentation proposal (‘Intermediate segmentation’: Young small-sized firms; Young micro-sized firms; Mature small-sized firms; Young medium-sized firms; Mature medium-sized firms; Foreign equity firms; Highly productive firms) has as criteria the firm size, the SME export intensity and industry. The last segmentation proposal (‘Parsimonious segmentation’: Medium-sized firms; Small-sized manufacturing firms; Micro-sized firms; Non-manufacturing small-sized firms; Export active small-sized firms; Potential exporters; Promising exporters firms) is based on SME size, business experience, foreign capital presence, and average productivity. Given the need for a parsimonius segmentation criterion, we convey that the most adequate segmentation criterion is the one combining SME size, export intensity and industry. This restricted number of criteria does not, however, affect the quality of the proposed SME segmentation, and has the advantage of being stasticaly adequate and user/cost friendly.Internationalization performance determinants, Portugal, Segmentation, SME

Assessing Canada's Ability to Compete for Foreign Direct Investment

The main purpose of this report is to assess Canada’s performance in attracting foreign direct investment inflows. The study reviews the literature on the benefits of FDI, analyses global and Canadian trends in FDI, identifies various factors affecting the inflow of FDI, and details how Canada ranks relative to other major OECD countries on the most influential factors. Canada’s share of world FDI has fallen markedly since 1980. The report finds that this development reflects the opening of other countries to FDI rather than a hostile climate for FDI in this country. Indeed, there is no one factor that can be identified as seriously impeding the flow of FDI to Canada. The report identifies a number of areas where Canada can potentially improve its attractiveness to FDI, including possible changes to FDI regulation, a more competitive tax regime, better infrastructure, and certain improvements in the human capital area.Foreign Direct Investment, Business climate, taxation, infrastructure, human capital

Is More Better? The Impact of Postsecondary Education on the Economic and Social Well-Being of American Society

Provides a review of research literature that examines the impact of higher education on individuals and society. Looks at economic and non-economic benefits and costs associated with an increase in public investment in postsecondary education

Career Changers in Teaching Jobs: A Case Study Based on the Swiss Vocational Education System

This study investigates the determinants and motives of professionals who change career to vocational teaching. The framework for this study is the Swiss vocational education system, which requires that teachers of vocational subjects must have a prior career in that specific field. Thus, to work in teaching, every vocational teacher has to change his or her initial career. This paper focuses on the relevance of monetary motives for changing a career to teaching. Using a unique data set of trainee teachers, we show that professionals who change their careers to teaching earned on average more in their first career than comparable workers in the same occupation. Our findings additionally demonstrate that the average career changer still expects to earn significantly more as a teacher than in the former career. However, the study shows substantial heterogeneity and a zero wage elasticity of the teacher supply, suggesting that non-monetary motives are more relevant for career change than monetary factors.career change, occupational change, rate of return to education, wage differentials, teacher wages, vocational education and training

Technical Debt Prioritization: State of the Art. A Systematic Literature Review

Background. Software companies need to manage and refactor Technical Debt issues. Therefore, it is necessary to understand if and when refactoring Technical Debt should be prioritized with respect to developing features or fixing bugs. Objective. The goal of this study is to investigate the existing body of knowledge in software engineering to understand what Technical Debt prioritization approaches have been proposed in research and industry. Method. We conducted a Systematic Literature Review among 384 unique papers published until 2018, following a consolidated methodology applied in Software Engineering. We included 38 primary studies. Results. Different approaches have been proposed for Technical Debt prioritization, all having different goals and optimizing on different criteria. The proposed measures capture only a small part of the plethora of factors used to prioritize Technical Debt qualitatively in practice. We report an impact map of such factors. However, there is a lack of empirical and validated set of tools. Conclusion. We observed that technical Debt prioritization research is preliminary and there is no consensus on what are the important factors and how to measure them. Consequently, we cannot consider current research conclusive and in this paper, we outline different directions for necessary future investigations