Quality-driven optimized resource allocation

The assurance of a good software product quality necessitates a managed software process. Periodic product evaluation (inspection and testing) should be executed during the development process in order to simultaneously guarantee the timeliness and quality aspects of the development workflow. A faithful prediction of the efforts needed forms the basis of a project management (PM) in order to perform a proper human resource allocation to the different development and QA activities. However, even robust resource demand and quality estimation tools, like COCOMO II and COQUALMO do not cover the timeliness point of view sufficiently due to their static nature. Correspondingly, continuous quality monitoring and quality driven supervisory control of the development process became vital aspects in PM. A well-established complementary approach uses the Weibull model to describe the dynamics of the development and QA process by a mathematical model based on the observations gained during the development process. Supervisory PM control has to concentrate development and QA resources to eliminate quality bottlenecks, as different parts (modules) of the product under development may reveal different defect density levels. Nevertheless, traditional heuristic quality management is unable to perform optimal resource allocation in the case of complex target programs. This paper presents a model-based quality-driven optimized resource allocation method. It combines the COQUALMO model as early quality predictor and empirical knowledge formulated by a Weibull model gained by the continuous monitoring of the QA process flow. An exact mathematical optimization technique is used for human resource, like tester allocation

Hospital Cost Accounting: Saving Lives and Saving on Costs

Within an industry constantly pursuing accuracy, a cost accounting system that addresses the ongoing concerns of saving money and increasing efficiency is a must. Now more than ever, hospitals require reliable information to combat the conflicting relationship between an increase in spending on new instruments and specialized staff, but a decrease in funding. This project explores potential avenues to find a successful cost accounting method using past research, analysis of hospitals’ current environments, and expert opinions from hospital and healthcare personnel. Each hospital is different based on their environment, surrounding population, type of services provided, and personal demands. This study seeks to contribute to previous studies attempting to debunk the navigation process for each hospital looking to find their cost accounting perfect match and where sights should be set on in the future

Enhancing the Performance of Chinese High Education Institutions through Collaborative Governance: A Dynamic Performance Management Approach

With the development of the knowledge economy, knowledge generation and application has been a powerful engine for economic development and global competition. Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) are under great pressure to improve their performance in teaching, research and the third mission, to respond to the changing social needs actively. This doctoral thesis is aimed at proposing a framework to enhance the performance of Chinese HEIs through collaborative governance using a dynamic performance management approach. Based on a literature review of performance management in Chinese HEIs, a conceptual framework is proposed to enhance the performance of teaching, research and the third mission in Chinese HEIs by 1) identifying the end results of the collaborative governance; 2) finding respective performance drivers for achieving end results and 3) building-up, preserving, and deploying a proper endowment of strategic resources. Especially, the performance drivers can be gauged to examine the performance of collaborative governance. A comparative case study of a consulting project and a joint lab was conducted to demonstrate the power of the conceptual framework to foster collaborative governance between HEIs and external organizations to enhance HEIs’ performance, specifically in the Chinese context. Firstly, it provides a framework to map and model the structure and process of collaborative governance. This framework allows us to make explicit expected end results, performance drivers and related strategic resources. Secondly, by the means of the causal loop diagrams depicting the underlying processes and mechanisms of the conceptual framework, this can engage HEIs and external organizations in a learning process to foster understanding, consensus and commitments. Finally, the conceptual framework can facilitate the implementation or improvement of collaborative governance practices by cascading overall organizational goals among different actors and analyzing alternative policies with the “learning device”. The case study shows that collaborative governance can enhance Chinese HEIs’ performance by (1) providing additional resources to support the research activities, such as funding, field research opportunities, data and application scenarios; (2) improving the efficiency of service delivery and relevance of research with field knowledge and external stakeholders’ active participation; (3) contributing to the improvement of teaching through new cases, new knowledge and learning-by-doing opportunities in projects. Furthermore, the active interaction with external stakeholders builds mutual understanding, trust, shared norms and good relationships, which in turn create critical strategic resources to enhance future collaborations. This thesis is a trial to enhance Chinese HEIs’ performance through collaborative governance. Future research can also introduce the objective view and the subjective view of dynamic performance management to further examine the processes and activities, and the responsibility of different decision-makers in the collaborating process. Besides, the development of simulation models can help strengthening the substantive validity of the conceptual framework and the case studies. Finally, it would be worthy to investigate the impact of the proposed framework in non-Chinese HEIs.With the development of the knowledge economy, knowledge generation and application has been a powerful engine for economic development and global competition. Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) are under great pressure to improve their performance in teaching, research and the third mission, to respond to the changing social needs actively. This doctoral thesis is aimed at proposing a framework to enhance the performance of Chinese HEIs through collaborative governance using a dynamic performance management approach. Based on a literature review of performance management in Chinese HEIs, a conceptual framework is proposed to enhance the performance of teaching, research and the third mission in Chinese HEIs by 1) identifying the end results of the collaborative governance; 2) finding respective performance drivers for achieving end results and 3) building-up, preserving, and deploying a proper endowment of strategic resources. Especially, the performance drivers can be gauged to examine the performance of collaborative governance. A comparative case study of a consulting project and a joint lab was conducted to demonstrate the power of the conceptual framework to foster collaborative governance between HEIs and external organizations to enhance HEIs’ performance, specifically in the Chinese context. Firstly, it provides a framework to map and model the structure and process of collaborative governance. This framework allows us to make explicit expected end results, performance drivers and related strategic resources. Secondly, by the means of the causal loop diagrams depicting the underlying processes and mechanisms of the conceptual framework, this can engage HEIs and external organizations in a learning process to foster understanding, consensus and commitments. Finally, the conceptual framework can facilitate the implementation or improvement of collaborative governance practices by cascading overall organizational goals among different actors and analyzing alternative policies with the “learning device”. The case study shows that collaborative governance can enhance Chinese HEIs’ performance by (1) providing additional resources to support the research activities, such as funding, field research opportunities, data and application scenarios; (2) improving the efficiency of service delivery and relevance of research with field knowledge and external stakeholders’ active participation; (3) contributing to the improvement of teaching through new cases, new knowledge and learning-by-doing opportunities in projects. Furthermore, the active interaction with external stakeholders builds mutual understanding, trust, shared norms and good relationships, which in turn create critical strategic resources to enhance future collaborations. This thesis is a trial to enhance Chinese HEIs’ performance through collaborative governance. Future research can also introduce the objective view and the subjective view of dynamic performance management to further examine the processes and activities, and the responsibility of different decision-makers in the collaborating process. Besides, the development of simulation models can help strengthening the substantive validity of the conceptual framework and the case studies. Finally, it would be worthy to investigate the impact of the proposed framework in non-Chinese HEIs

The management of academic workloads: full report on findings

The pressures on UK higher education (from explicit competition and growth in student numbers, to severe regulatory demands) are greater than ever, and have resulted in a steady increase in measures taken by universities to actively manage their finances and overall quality. These pressures are also likely to have impacted on staff and, indeed, recent large surveys in the sector have indicated that almost half of respondents find their workloads unmanageable. Against this background it would seem logical that the emphasis on institutional interventions to improve finance and quality, should be matched by similar attention given to the allocation of workloads to staff, and a focus on how best to utilise people’s time - the single biggest resource available within universities. Thus the aim of this piece of research was to focus on the processes and practices surrounding the allocation of staff workloads within higher education. Ten diverse organisations were selected for study: six universities in the UK, two overseas universities and two non higher education (but knowledge-intensive) organisations. In each, a crosssection of staff was selected, and in-depth interviews carried out. A total of 59 such interviews were carried out across the ten organisations. By identifying typical practices, as well as interesting alternatives, views on the various strengths and weaknesses of each of their workload allocation approaches was collated; and associated factors requiring attention identified. Through an extensive process of analysis, approaches which promoted more equitable loads for individuals, and which might provide synergies for institutions were also investigated

Management issues in systems engineering

When applied to a system, the doctrine of successive refinement is a divide-and-conquer strategy. Complex systems are sucessively divided into pieces that are less complex, until they are simple enough to be conquered. This decomposition results in several structures for describing the product system and the producing system. These structures play important roles in systems engineering and project management. Many of the remaining sections in this chapter are devoted to describing some of these key structures. Structures that describe the product system include, but are not limited to, the requirements tree, system architecture and certain symbolic information such as system drawings, schematics, and data bases. The structures that describe the producing system include the project's work breakdown, schedules, cost accounts and organization

Towards a General Theory of Financial Control for Organisations

In this paper, a theory of accounting, control and accounting-related areas is outlined.It is based on a number of previous research-oriented books published over several decades and the author´s specific own experiences from internal and external processes with organisations in focus.Consistency and integrative power of the ideas have been tested in relation to certain books in various fields outside the core of the subject:theatre,sociology, applied systems theory,economic history, institutional theory and economics.The general approach can be described in simple terms as follows.There are global value chains, from resources to output that are in use.These chains change with time.Uncertainty and unpredictability prevail for the present state and for possible changes; to some extent it is possible to estimate risks of the future. At any moment, each organisation has taken some limited position on a chain.Each organisation has a hierarchy which lies above operations. Over time, chains, organisations, hierarchies, output and personal functions vary. According to the approach, insights into control problems for every organisation and system can be gained by analysing relationships between global value chains and a hierarchy of one or several organisations.Time is crucial.financial control; management control; public administration; financial entities; financial reporting; dependencies; function-driven organisations; pay-driven organisations; transfer-driven organisations; supervisory boards; mass media; auditors; natural systems; panarchy; pseudo-commercial units; inter-organisational control; long-term control; short-term effects; hierarchies; global value chains; vertical control; horizontal control; corporate governance; remote control; controllability; transparency; values-in-use; values-in-exchange; fair values; historical costing; opportunity costs; product costing; transfer pricing; local optimization; time-bound optimization; longitudinal relationships.