Innovation and Information Technology in Services

The missing effect of investments of firms in information and communication technologies on productivity is studied by various recent papers (e.g. Oliner and Sichels 1994, Landauer 1995, Brynjolfsson and Hitt 1996). Several explanations are given for this missing link. Our paper deals with two of them, using two newly available data sets for the German service sector. Using data from a survey of innovative activities in services we show that investment in information technology (IT) has a stronger effect on the quality of services than on the productivity of the IT-using firm. IT investment seems to be especially effective when innovations enhance the delivery speed and the spatial or temporal availability of service. Moreover, data of the German IT survey point towards the need to differentiate between types of IT investment. It is shown that especially the most recent generation of IT as indicated by the number of PCs used is the source of productivity growth whereas traditional IT like mainframes exhibit only minor productivity effects. We conclude from our results that mismeasurement of the quality of new products and processes is one important reason for our inability to uncover the productivity effect of IT. Moreover, dividing IT-investment by the type of IT clarifies that the kind of IT a firm uses is more important for productivity growth what than its quantity. In any case we expect that the bulk of the IT-related productivity growth is still to come. In order to realize the benefits from IT investment entirely, firms have to undergo a large restructuring of business functions. --Information Technology,Productivity,Service Sector

Naming the Pain in Requirements Engineering: A Design for a Global Family of Surveys and First Results from Germany

For many years, we have observed industry struggling in defining a high quality requirements engineering (RE) and researchers trying to understand industrial expectations and problems. Although we are investigating the discipline with a plethora of empirical studies, they still do not allow for empirical generalisations. To lay an empirical and externally valid foundation about the state of the practice in RE, we aim at a series of open and reproducible surveys that allow us to steer future research in a problem-driven manner. We designed a globally distributed family of surveys in joint collaborations with different researchers and completed the first run in Germany. The instrument is based on a theory in the form of a set of hypotheses inferred from our experiences and available studies. We test each hypothesis in our theory and identify further candidates to extend the theory by correlation and Grounded Theory analysis. In this article, we report on the design of the family of surveys, its underlying theory, and the full results obtained from Germany with participants from 58 companies. The results reveal, for example, a tendency to improve RE via internally defined qualitative methods rather than relying on normative approaches like CMMI. We also discovered various RE problems that are statistically significant in practice. For instance, we could corroborate communication flaws or moving targets as problems in practice. Our results are not yet fully representative but already give first insights into current practices and problems in RE, and they allow us to draw lessons learnt for future replications. Our results obtained from this first run in Germany make us confident that the survey design and instrument are well-suited to be replicated and, thereby, to create a generalisable empirical basis of RE in practice

What's Spurious, What's Real? Measuring the Productivity Impacts of ICT at the Firm-Level

In order to assess the productivity effects of information and communication technologies (ICT), regressions based on cross?sectional firm?level data may yield unreliable results for the commonly employed production function framework. In this paper, various estimation biases and econometric strategies to overcome their sources are discussed. The effects are illustrated on the basis of a representative set of panel data for German service firms. The application of a suited SYS?GMM estimator yields evidence for significant productivity effects of ICT which are substantially smaller though than those suggested by cross?section or pooled OLS estimates. --Productivity,Information and Communication Technologies,Production Function Estimation,Panel Data,Services

Intelligent software quality model: The theoretical framework

Globally, software quality issues has increasingly been seen as a common strategic response for achieving competitiveness in business.It has been seen very important as the usage of software become very demanding.Software quality includes quality control tests, quality assurance and quality management.Currently, software quality models available were built based on static measurements of attributes and measures.Previous study has indicated that to ensure the quality of software meets the future requirements and needs, the new dynamic and intelligent software quality model has to be developed.This paper discusses the development of intelligent software quality model based on behavioral and human perspectives approach which enhances from Pragmatic Quality Factor (PQF) model as a benchmark of the quality assessment

Cocomo II as productivity measurement: a case study at KBC.

Software productivity is generally measured as the ratio of size over effort, whereby several techniques exist to measure the size. In this paper, we propose the innovative approach to use an estimation model as productivity measurement. This approach is applied in a case-study at the ICT-department of a bank and insurance company. The estimation model, in this case Cocomo II, is used as the norm to judge about productivity of application development projects. This research report describes on the one hand the set-up process of the measurement environment and on the other hand the measurement results. To gain insight in the measurement data, we developed a report which makes it possible to identify productivity improvement areas in the development process of the case-study company.

TiO2 nanoparticles in textile finishing

93 s. :il., tab., grafy +CD ROMThe aim of this study has been to observe the effect of TiO2 nanoparticles as it was used in finishing methods such as printing, sol gel and hydrophobic finish. To study the surface wettability of textile fabrics by contact angle measurement. To observe the UV-shielding property of the treated fabrics characterized by UV-VIS spectrophotometry. The contact angle of textile materials used was measured, the UPF values were also measured and comparable, the porosity of textile material was also determined statistically. With the aims mentioned above the theoretical part was described, the practical method used was also described