14,424 research outputs found
Small Satellite Industrial Base Study: Foundational Findings
This report documents findings from a Small Satellite (SmallSat) Industrial Base Study conducted by The Aerospace Corporation between November 2018 and September 2019. The primary objectives of this study were a) to gain a better understanding of the SmallSat communitys technical practices, engineering approaches, requirements flow-downs, and common processes and b) identify insights and recommendations for how the government can further capitalize on the strengths and capabilities of SmallSat offerings. In the context of this study, SmallSats are understood to weigh no more than 500 kg, as described in State of the Art Small Spacecraft Technology, NASA/TP-2018- 220027, December 2018. CubeSats were excluded from this study to avoid overlap and duplication of recently completed work or other studies already under way. The team also touched on differences between traditional space-grade and the emerging mid-grade and other non-space, alternate-grade EEEE (electrical, electronic, electromechanical, electro-optical) piece part categories. Finally, the participants sought to understand the potential effects of increased use of alternate-grade parts on the traditional space-grade industrial base. The study team was keenly aware that there are missions for which non-space grade parts currently are infeasible for the foreseeable future. National security, long-duration and high-reliability missions intolerant of risk are a few examples. The team sought to identify benefits of alternative parts and approaches that can be harnessed by the government to achieve greater efficiencies and capabilities without impacting mission success
The Question of Spectrum: Technology, Management, and Regime Change
There is general agreement that the traditional command-and-control regulation of radio spectrum by the FCC (and NTIA) has failed. There is no general agreement on which regime should succeed it. Property rights advocates take Ronald Coase's advice that spectrum licenses should be sold off and traded in secondary markets, like any other assets. Commons advocates argue that new technologies cannot be accommodated by a licensing regime (either traditional or property rights) and that a commons regime leads to the most efficient means to deliver useful spectrum to the American public. This article reviews the scholarly history of this controversy, outlines the revolution of FCC thinking, and parses the question of property rights vs. commons into four distinct parts: new technology, spectrum uses, spectrum management, and the overarching legal regime. Advocates on both sides find much to agree about on the first three factors; the disagreement is focused on the choice of overarching regime to most efficiently and effectively make spectrum and its applications available to the American public. There are two feasible regime choices: a property rights regime and a mixed licensed/commons regime subject to regulation. The regime choice depends upon four factors: dispute resolution, transactions costs, tragedies of the commons and anticommons, and flexibility to changing technologies and demands. Each regime is described and analyzed against these four factors. With regard to pure transactions costs, commons may hold an advantage but it appears quite small. For all other factors, the property rights regime holds very substantial advantages relative to the mixed regime. I conclude that the choice comes down to markets vs. regulation as mechanism for allocating resources.
Estimating, planning and managing Agile Web development projects under a value-based perspective
Context: The processes of estimating, planning and managing are crucial for software development projects,
since the results must be related to several business strategies. The broad expansion of the Internet
and the global and interconnected economy make Web development projects be often characterized by
expressions like delivering as soon as possible, reducing time to market and adapting to undefined
requirements. In this kind of environment, traditional methodologies based on predictive techniques
sometimes do not offer very satisfactory results. The rise of Agile methodologies and practices has
provided some useful tools that, combined with Web Engineering techniques, can help to establish a
framework to estimate, manage and plan Web development projects.
Objective: This paper presents a proposal for estimating, planning and managing Web projects, by
combining some existing Agile techniques with Web Engineering principles, presenting them as an
unified framework which uses the business value to guide the delivery of features.
Method: The proposal is analyzed by means of a case study, including a real-life project, in order to obtain
relevant conclusions.
Results: The results achieved after using the framework in a development project are presented, including
interesting results on project planning and estimation, as well as on team productivity throughout the
project.
Conclusion: It is concluded that the framework can be useful in order to better manage Web-based
projects, through a continuous value-based estimation and management process.Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad TIN2013-46928-C3-3-
What influences the speed of prototyping? An empirical investigation of twenty software startups
It is essential for startups to quickly experiment business ideas by building
tangible prototypes and collecting user feedback on them. As prototyping is an
inevitable part of learning for early stage software startups, how fast
startups can learn depends on how fast they can prototype. Despite of the
importance, there is a lack of research about prototyping in software startups.
In this study, we aimed at understanding what are factors influencing different
types of prototyping activities. We conducted a multiple case study on twenty
European software startups. The results are two folds, firstly we propose a
prototype-centric learning model in early stage software startups. Secondly, we
identify factors occur as barriers but also facilitators for prototyping in
early stage software startups. The factors are grouped into (1) artifacts, (2)
team competence, (3) collaboration, (4) customer and (5) process dimensions. To
speed up a startups progress at the early stage, it is important to incorporate
the learning objective into a well-defined collaborative approach of
prototypingComment: This is the author's version of the work. Copyright owner's version
can be accessed at doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-57633-6_2, XP2017, Cologne,
German
Success factors in information technology projects
The failure of IT projects has been a major problem over the decades. The previous study has found that big IT projects overran 45% of the cost, 7% of schedule and produced 56% less profit than expected (Mckinsey 2012). Today, the situation has not been changed significantly. It is crucial to explore critical success factors to enable software companies to avoid risks in project development across various industries. These factors should cover more organizational aspects among different customer businesses as IT projects are more challenging and diverse with a high level of novelty. The main aim of this thesis is to research organizational aspects in different software firms which can moderately im-pact IT project success and how these factors influence total project performance as IT projects have failed with many reasons over years. The study was analyzed on empirical data from the IT barometer 2014 data set of Finnish Data Processing Association. All senior managers were asked whether they agree or disagree that specified critical factors can impact on IT project success by selecting the respective scale. The study results found three of the most important factors which moderately impact the IT project success. IT architecture, enterprise architecture, and selection of IT solutions can enable software firms to gain business objectives and expected IT project outcomes during the implementation phase to meet market demands and customer satisfaction. In addition, only IT architecture and enterprise architecture can help the project team run a development project on time to gain product leadership and competitive advantages. There are other critical factors can enable IT projects to gain success in expected project outcomes during the implementation phase. In total project performance aspect, the study findings show that IT architecture can improve project timeliness better than the achievement of business objectives to gain good market share. Further, enterprise architecture has a moderate correlation with project time-to-market and achievement of business objectives to enhance project success against fierce rivalry among competitors within the software industry. The study found that the selection of IT solutions can only enable a project team to increase project competency in order to gain business objectives during development time. Hence, senior managers should consider the importance of these success factors during development phases to gain project success as expectations and improve total project performance for surpassing competitors on the market for profits and competitive advantages
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Multichannel in a complex world
The proliferation of devices and channels has brought new challenges to just about every
organisation in delivering consistently good customer experiences and effectively joining up
service provision with marketing activity, data and content. A good multichannel strategy and
execution is increasingly becoming essential to marketers and customer experience
professionals from every sector. This report seeks to identify the key issues, challenges and opportunities that surround
multichannel and provide some best practice insight and principles on the elements that are
key to multichannel success. As part of the research for this report, we spoke to six
experienced customer experience and marketing practitioners from large organisations
across different sectors.
In Multichannel Marketing: Metrics and Methods for On and Offline Success, Akin Arikan
(2008) said:
‘Because customers are multichannel beings and demand relevant, consistent experiences
across all channels, businesses need to adopt a multichannel mind-set when listening to
their customers.’
It was clear from the companies interviewed for this report that it remains challenging for
many organisations to maintain consistency across so many customer touchpoints. Not only
that, but the ability to balance consistency with the capability to fully exploit the unique
attributes of each channel remains an aspiration for many.
The proliferation of devices and digital channels has added complexity to customer journeys,
making issues around the joining up of customer experience and the attribution of value of
key importance to many. Whilst senior leaders within the organisations spoken to seem to be
bought in to multichannel, this buy-in was not always replicated across the rest of the
organisation and did not always translate into a cohesive multichannel strategy. A number of companies were undertaking work around customer journey mapping and
customer segmentation, using a variety of passive and actively collected data in order to
identify specific areas of poor customer experience and create action plans for improvement.
Others were undertaking projects using sophisticated tracking and tagging technologies to
develop an understanding of the value and role of specific channels and to provide better
intelligence to the business on attribution that might be used to inform future investment
decisions.
A consistent barrier to improving customer experience is the ability to join up many different
legacy systems and data in order to provide a single customer view and form the basis for
delivery of a more consistent and cohesive multichannel approach.
Whilst there remain significant challenges around multichannel, there are some useful
technologies allowing businesses to develop better insight into customer motivation and
activity. Nonetheless, delivery of seamless multichannel experience remains a work-inprogress
for many
Determining how information technology is changing the role of leadership in virtual organization
Includes bibliographical references
Invited Paper: A Generalized, Enterprise-Level Systems Development Process Framework for Systems Analysis and Design Education
Current academic and industry discussions regarding systems development project approaches increasingly focus on agile development and/or DevOps, as these approaches are seen as more modern, streamlined, flexible, and, therefore, effective as compared to traditional plan-driven approaches. This extends to the current pedagogy for teaching systems analysis and design (SA&D). However, overemphasizing agile and DevOps neglects broader dimensions that are essential for planning and executing enterprise-level systems projects. Thus, a dilemma may arise: do we teach agile and DevOps techniques that may be inadequate for enterprise-level projects or do we teach the wider range of plan-driven skills and techniques that may conflict with the tenets and benefits of agile and DevOps? In this paper, we advocate for resolving this dilemma by adopting a generalized process framework that both fully supports enterprise-level projects but can also be selectively scaled back toward increased agility for smaller, less complex projects. In its full realization, this framework combines extensive project planning and up-front requirements with iterative delivery – an increasingly popular approach today for enterprise projects. In scaling back toward agile, the framework carefully accounts for system, environment, and team characteristics. Further, the model emphasizes issues frequently underemphasized by agile approaches, including the use of external software such as commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS), Software- as-a-Service (SaaS), and open source products and components; the need for business-oriented project planning and justification; and support for change management to ensure successful system adoption. The framework thereby flexibly accommodates the full range of activities that software projects must support to be successful
Qualitative Case Studies in Operations Management: Trends, Research Outcomes, And Future Research Implications
Our study examines the state of qualitative case studies in operations management. Five main operations management journals are included for their impact on the field. They are in alphabetical order: Decision Sciences, International Journal of Operations and Production Management, Journal of Operations Management, Management Science, and Production and Operations Management. The qualitative case studies chosen were published between 1992 and 2007. With an increasing trend toward using more qualitative case studies, there have been meaningful and significant contributions to the field of operations management, especially in the area of theory building. However, in many of the qualitative case studies we reviewed, sufficient details in research design, data collection, and data analysis were missing. For instance, there are studies that do not offer sampling logic or a description of the analysis through which research out-comes are drawn. Further, research protocols for doing inductive case studies are much better developed compared to the research protocols for doing deductive case studies. Consequently, there is a lack of consistency in the way the case method has been applied. As qualitative researchers, we offer suggestions on how we can improve on what we have done and elevate the level of rigor and consistency
How Satellites are Moving Beyond the Class System: Class Agnostic Development and Operations Approaches for Constraints-Driven Missions
Should we abolish the Class System? The Class A/B/C/D mission assurance and risk posture designations familiar to most satellite developers were established in 1986. They are used by both the Department of Defense (DoD) and National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to define risk and risk mitigation requirements for flight missions. However, many of today’s satellites are different – smaller, digitally engineered, designed for production, and increasingly destined for proliferated architectures. The rate of development is increasing while the uniqueness of the systems being built is decreasing.
The need to move faster and the ability to utilize, for the first time in space, real product-line components challenges the premise and assumptions behind the Class A through D designations. The traditional “Class System” is not as applicable to most small satellite developments, which instead focus on ways to prioritize key, high impact, agile processes in an effort to cut costs and timelines. Operating within this environment requires satellite developers to apply practices that are agnostic to class definition (e.g., the practices that are most fundamental to ensuring the mission meets the needs).
This paper outlines the Class Agnostic approach and constraints-based mission implementation practices. It will describe several real-life examples from Air Force Research Laboratory, Space and Missile System Center, and Space Rapid Capabilities Office missions that are applying a “class agnostic” approach to their missions. It will include lessons learned from missions which failed critical Do No Harm requirements and lost a flight to missions that have fully utilized the class agnostic approach. It will also discuss how the several missions used class-agnostic techniques to balance requirements of scope, risk, cost, and schedule to maximize the chances of mission success within hard constraints. The approaches used in these missions are applicable not only to small satellites, but also to any mission intending to move beyond the “Class System” to a more agile and flexible mindset for risk mitigation and mission assurance
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