Cost of Quality in Software Products: An Empirical Analysis

Computer software has emerged as a major worldwide industry, estimated at $450B for 1995 of which$225B is attributable to US firms [Boehm, 1987]. Yet, in many organizations, costs and schedules for software projects are largely unpredictable, and product quality is often poor [DeMarco and Lister, 1993]. This underscores the need to study both the quality of the software product and the life-cycle cost incurred in the development and maintenance of the products. Increasing expenditure in software has caught the attention of researchers. Identifying software productivity factors and estimating software costs continue to be important research topics [Mukhopadhyay and Kekre, 1992; Banker et al., 1993]. Researchers have adopted both empirical and theoretical approaches to better understand the process of software development and maintenance. Though software cost continues to be an important research question, competition in the software industry and the increased role of software in everyday life have also made development cycle time and quality important research issues. The quality of software has been studied mainly from defect analysis and software maintenance perspectives. Empirical research has analyzed tradeoffs between software quality and maintenance, and examined drivers of software maintenance costs [Banker, et al., 1993]. Practitioners in the software industry are still faced with the challenge of understanding the key tradeoffs in a software project in order to deliver quality products to customers on time and without cost overruns. This underscores the need to study the various factors that influence the life-cycle cost and quality in software products. Moreover, the effect of the process used in a software project on the outcome of the project in terms of cost to the software developer and quality of the product has not been examined rigorously. Thus in this research, we propose to model the life-cycle cost and quality of software products based on the factorsrelated to product, people, process and technology deployed in the software project

Thick Line Segment Detection with Fast Directional Tracking

International audienceThis paper introduces a fully discrete framework for a new straight line detector in gray-level images, where line segments are enriched with a thickness parameter intended to provide a quality criterion on the extracted feature. This study is based on a previous work on interactive line detection in gray-level images. At first, a better estimation of the segment thickness and orientation is achieved through two main improvements: adaptive directional scans and control of assigned thickness. Then, these advances are exploited for a complete unsupervised detection of all the line segments in an image. The new thick line detector is left available in an online demonstration

Inventory Signals

How does operational competence translate into market value, when firms cannot credibly communicate their competence to the market? I consider the example of inventory and fill rates. When the market sees a high-inventory firm, it cannot tell whether the inventory is due to incompetence or a strategy to enhance fill rate. Firms might decide to signal their competence to the market by carrying less inventory. I show conditions for separating and pooling perfect Bayesian equilibria. I also provide empirical evidence for this theory that inventory has a signaling role. The theory could potentially provide a framework that describes one way in which a range of operational competences such as purchasing and outsourcing, translate to market value. Practically, it has implications for firms, such as how to strategically communicate to the market, reward managers, or even whether to go public and be subject to market pressures

The role and potential of umbilical cord blood in an era of new therapies: a review

In light of pioneering findings in the 1980s and an estimation of more than 130 million global annual births, umbilical cord blood (UCB) is considered to be the most plentiful reservoir of cells and to have regenerative potential for many clinical applications. Although UCB is used mainly against blood disorders, the spectrum of diseases for which it provides effective therapy has been expanded to include non-hematopoietic conditions; UCB has also been used as source for regenerative cell therapy and immune modulation. Thus, collection and banking of UCB-derived cells have become a popular option. However, there are questions regarding the cost versus the benefits of UCB banking, and it also raises complex ethical and legal issues. This review discusses many issues surrounding the conservation of UCB-derived cells and the great potential and current clinical applications of UCB in an era of new therapies. In particular, we describe the practical issues inherent in UCB collection, processing, and long-term storage as well as the different types of ‘stem’ or progenitor cells circulating in UCB and their uses in multiple clinical settings. Given these considerations, the trend toward UCB will continue to provide growing assistance to health care worldwide