On top management support for software cost estimation

Inaccurate software cost estimates continue causing project overruns and hurting firms’ economy. This thesis addresses the problem by focusing on top management role in applying estimation methodologies successfully in organisations. The research questions are 1) How does top management support software cost estimation, and 2) What are the impacts of top management support for creating a good cost estimate for a software project? Three empirical studies, one quantitative and two qualitative, were conducted to address the research questions. The studies identified practices, through which top management is involved in cost estimation, and collected evidence on the impact of practices on estimation success. The quantitative study is based on views of 114 Finnish software professionals, and the quantitative studies are based on in-depth findings from three Finnish software producing companies and projects. The results show that top management support for estimation is mostly indirect. Management focuses on creating a successful environment for estimation instead of hands-on participation.The key factors of top management support include adequate resources, demonstrating the importance of estimation and seeking realism. This indirect role is enough for successful estimation.On the other hand, the results provide evidence that top management may negatively impact estimation. For example, unclear expectations may cause the project team to aim for the wrong outcome, expressed expectations may bias estimation and interpreting estimates as commitments may decrease estimators’ motivation and cause them to give high estimates. The practical implication is that top management should avoid direct participation in software estimation and focus on sustaining a supportive and unbiased environment. By doing this, many projects should be able to avoid failures hurting firms’ competitiveness. From the research perspective, the results provide evidence that people-related perspectives are an important factor in software estimation, implying that a shifting focus from methodologies toward managerial topics is justified.Epätarkat ohjelmistoprojektien kustannusarviot johtavat suunnitelmien ylittymiseen ja rasittavat yritysten taloutta. Tämä väitöskirja keskittyy ylimmän johdon rooliin arviointimenetelmien menestyksekkäässä soveltamisessa organisaatioissa. Väitöskirjan tutkimuskysymykset ovat 1) kuinka ylin johto tukee ohjelmistojen kustannusarviointia ja 2) mitä vaikutuksia johdon tuella hyvän kustannusarvion laatimiseksi on ohjelmistoprojektille? Väitöskirjan tulokset perustuvat yhteen määrälliseen ja kahteen laadulliseen tutkimukseen. Tutkimukset tunnistivat tapoja, joilla johto osallistui kustannusarviointiin sekä keräsi näyttöä osallistumiskäytänteiden vaikutuksista arvioinnin onnistumiseen. Määrällinen tutkimus pohjautuu 114 suomalaisen ohjelmistoammattilaisen näkemyksiin, kun taas laadulliset tutkimukset pohjautuvat löydöksiin kolmen suomalaisen ohjelmistoyrityksen toteuttamista kolmesta ohjelmistoprojektista. Tulokset osoittavat, että ylimmän johdon tuki arvioinnille on pääasiallisesti epäsuoraa. Johto keskittyy hyvien edellytysten luomiseen sen sijaan, että osallistuisi arviointiin henkilökohtaisesti. Tärkeimpiin tapoihin tukea arviointia kuuluvat mm. riittävien resurssien varmistaminen ja realististen arvioiden tavoittelu. Yllä kuvattu epäsuora osallistuminen on riittävää arvioinnin onnistumiseksi. Toisaalta johdon toimet voivat myös vaikuttaa arviointiin negatiivisesti. Esimerkiksi epäselvät tavoitteet saattavat johtaa väärien asioiden tavoitteluun, johdon esittämät odotukset voivat vääristää arvioinnin tuloksia ja arvioiden tulkitseminen lupauksiksi voi laskea arvioitsijoiden motivaatiota ja johtaa perusteettoman korkeiden arvioiden antamiseen. Esitettyjen tulosten perusteella johdon pitäisi välttää suoraa osallistumista arviointiin ja keskittyä arviointia tukevan ilmapiirin luomiseen. Näillä toimilla useat projektit voisivat todennäköisesti välttää yrityksille vahingolliset epäonnistumiset. Tutkimusnäkökulmasta tulokset osoittavat, että inhimilliset tekijät ovat merkittävässä roolissa kustannusarvioinnissa, ja lisäpanostukset johtamisnäkökulmien tutkimiseen ovat perusteltuja

The Unfulfilled Potential of Data-Driven Decision Making in Agile Software Development

With the general trend towards data-driven decision making (DDDM), organizations are looking for ways to use DDDM to improve their decisions. However, few studies have looked into the practitioners view of DDDM, in particular for agile organizations. In this paper we investigated the experiences of using DDDM, and how data can improve decision making. An emailed questionnaire was sent out to 124 industry practitioners in agile software developing companies, of which 84 answered. The results show that few practitioners indicated a widespread use of DDDM in their current decision making practices. The practitioners were more positive to its future use for higher-level and more general decision making, fairly positive to its use for requirements elicitation and prioritization decisions, while being less positive to its future use at the team level. The practitioners do see a lot of potential for DDDM in an agile context; however, currently unfulfilled

Debiasing through raising awareness reduces the anchoring bias

Poster presented at BPS Annual Conference 2014. Objective: To investigate the impact of the anchoring bias and debiasing interventions with professional, expert software engineers. We hypothesised that debiasing strategies would reduce bias. Method: Ethical approval was given prior to conducting the study. Five experiments were conducted with software engineers (N=118) in two locations. At each location, participants attended a workshop raising awareness of the impact on estimation of a range of cognitive biases, including anchoring. Immediately following the workshop, the participants at each location were divided into two groups (high versus low anchor) and asked to provide an estimate of effort for a familiar task. Data were analysed using Mann-Whitney tests. To test the impact of the workshop on the anchoring bias, effort estimation data collected previously with different samples of software engineers at each location, were compared with effort estimation data following the workshop (ANOVA). Results: The anchor had a large and significant impact (effect size, large, 0.3; Mann-Whitney, p<0.0001) on the effort estimates. The impact of the anchor was significantly reduced following the workshop (effect size, large 0.14; two-way ANOVA, p<0.0001). Conclusion: The impact of the anchoring bias on expert judgement is substantial and difficult to eradicate. Nevertheless, a debiasing activity such as attending a workshop to raise awareness can significantly reduce the effect. The study is limited in that the samples involved in the analysis of the impact of the workshop on effort estimation were independent. This will be addressed in further work

The unfulfilled potential of data-driven decision making in agile software development

With the general trend towards data-driven decision making (DDDM), organizations are looking for ways to use DDDM to improve their decisions. However, few studies have looked into the practitioners view of DDDM, in particular for agile organizations. In this paper we investigated the experiences of using DDDM, and how data can improve decision making. An emailed questionnaire was sent out to 124 industry practitioners in agile software developing companies, of which 84 answered. The results show that few practitioners indicated a wide-spread use of DDDM in their current decision making practices. The practitioners were more positive to its future use for higher-level and more general decision making, fairly positive to its use for requirements elicitation and prioritization decisions, while being less positive to its future use at the team level. The practitioners do see a lot of potential for DDDM in an agile context; however, currently unfulfilled

Mind Wandering in Information Technology Use:Scale Development and CrossValidation

Because our minds frequently drift away, an investigation into mind wandering while using information technology (IT) is critical. Despite growing interest in mind-wandering episodes in various domains, the discipline of Information Systems (IS) still lacks a validated measurement instrument that can account for the technology-related facets of the phenomenon. Our work addresses this gap and presents the results of a comprehensively developed scale that is specifically designed for IS scenarios. Using existing literature and the results of a pilot study (N = 35), a field study (N = 364), and a cross-validation sample (N = 336), we developed a new instrument that allows mind wandering while using technology to be measured either as a state (MWS) or as a trait with two subtypes (MWT-D: deliberate, and MWT-S: spontaneous). Whereas MWS captures a momentary mental state or a sequence of mental states that arise relatively freely while using technology in a given moment, MWT-D and MWT-S capture either intentional or unintentional, internally focused thoughts in technology-related settings in everyday life. Our scale is well suited to support future research to investigate the effects of mind wandering in technology-related settings and to study its implications for IS-relevant dependent variables, such as task performance and creativity.</p

Development and validation of scientific indicators of the relationship between criminality, social cohesion and economic performance

The study intends to contribute to a better understanding of the interactions between criminality, economic performance and social cohesion. We try to achieve this aim by evaluating the existing economic and criminological research and by carrying out own empirical investigation on the basis of international panel data sets from different levels of regional aggregation. Our empirical results with respect to the causes of crime clearly reveal the crime reducing potential of family cohesion and the link between crime and the labour market. Furthermore, we find that higher wealth is associated with higher rates of property crime and of drug-related offences. Drug offences themselves turn out to be robust factors of property crimes. Compared to studies assessing the causes of crime, investigations on its consequences are relatively rare. In our analysis, we investigate the impact of crime on economic performance. We find evidence that employment as well as GDP growth rates are negatively affected by the regional incidence of criminality. Crime ; socio-economic factors ; demographics ; European panel data --

Post-Acceptance of Electronic Medical Records: Evidence from a Longitudinal Field Study

Many studies investigating post-acceptance of electronic medical records (EMR) assume that healthcare professionals exclusively base their continuance behavior on reasoned actions. While rational considerations certainly affect the intention to use an EMR, it does not fully explain the definitive user continuance behavior. Evidence exists that also subliminal effects such as habits and emotions play an important role. Consequently, we propose to investigate post-acceptance of EMR applying three different, but complementary views: (i) continuance behavior as result of reasoned actions, (ii) continuance behavior as result of emotional responses, and (iii) continuance behavior as result of habitual responses. The results from a longitudinal field study showed that automatic behavior, enabled by sufficient facilitating conditions and a good task-technology-fit, as well as positive emotions considerably affected healthcare professionals EMR continuance behavior. It also showed that a user’s computer literacy level didn’t play a significant role regarding the post-acceptance behavior