Designing Effective Websites: Lending Structure to a Chaotic Process

This paper explores some of the issues in the design and development of websites. The term website is used to refer to a family of web pages devoted to a common theme, typically hosted on a single server. It outlines the major issues that demand attention in the assembly of effective websites. While the emphasis of this paper is in macro-level design, it is important to realize that significant attention is necessary for the micro-level design of pages that comprise a website. However, given the vast amount of material on this subject, this aspect of website design will be downplayed in this paper

Assembling a Metrics Suite for Rule-Based Systems Development

Metrics have been routinely employed in the development of traditional software. With the adoption of the Capability Maturity ModelSM from SEI, the formal incorporation of metrics into the development process is mandated for higher levels of development practice. In the case of knowledge-based systems (KBS), very little use of formal metrics is reported. This paper examines some of the reasons for this situation, and provides a suite of metrics that can be employed in the development of KBS

Genetic Algorithm-based Feature Selection for Auditing Decisions

When examining a firm’s financial statements, independent auditors seek to render opinions on their fairness, accuracy, presence of fraud, and going concern, among others. This research focuses on the going concern, and the ability to predict when the going concern is flagged based on an array of accounting measures. It seeks to determine a parsimonious set of measures that can accurately predict when the going concern is raised, when using a linear kernel support vector machine for prediction. A genetic algorithm is employed to effectively reduce the set of measures without compromising accuracy of prediction. Using data from audits of public firms, a parsimonious model is created utilizing only 8 measures from a set of 35 available measures. The model exhibits 98.6% accuracy, and outperforms several other machine learning techniques

Software Reuse Management: Development of a Model in the Context of the Capability Maturity Model

This paper describes a model for software reuse management within the context of the Capability Maturity Model. It outlines reuse components and practices as organizations move through more mature levels of software development. Unlike prior models that focus on a prescriptive approach, the reuse management model acknowledges the existence of a sizeable portfolio of existing applications, including legacy systems, which can provide basis for reuse

Information Security Management: A System Dynamics Approach

Managing security for information assets presents a challenging task. The need for effective information security management assumes greater importance with growing reliance on distributed systems and Internet-accessible systems. Many factors play a role in determining the vulnerability of information assets to security threats. Using a system dynamics approach, this study evaluates information security management strategies from a financial and asset loss perspective, with a view to providing managers guidance for information security decisions

Support for Wireless LAN Design

As mobile devices become common in mainstream computing, it becomes imperative to effectively design computing architectures that seamlessly and effectively integrate them. Rapid advancements in wireless technology has made it possible to build efficient wireless local area networks (WLANs). Designing WLANs presents some unique challenges. Some heuristics are available for WLAN design, but they represent piecemeal solutions, focusing on a limited set of issues. This paper provides a more comprehensive approach to WLAN design, by providing support for additional tasks in the design process, as well as by providing the designer the option of examining multiple competing options. The approach is developed in modular fashion, thereby permitting the easy substitution of alternative models in any phase of the process. We believe the approach to be useful for WLAN designers, and it provides an apt illustration of design science in information systems research