Improving Bespoke Software Quality: Strategies for Application and Enterprise Architects

Despite over 50 years of software engineering as a formal practice, contemporary developers of bespoke software follow development practices that result in low-quality products with high development and maintenance costs. This qualitative case study sought to identify strategies used by software and enterprise architects for applying architectural best practices to improve bespoke software quality and lower the total cost of ownership. The study population was application and enterprise architects associated with delivering bespoke software for the enterprise architecture team at a large enterprise in the Nashville, Tennessee metropolitan area. Interview data were collected from 7 enterprise or solution architects; in addition, 47 organizational documents were gathered. Guided by the principles of total quality management, thematic analysis was used to identify codes and themes related to management of quality in software solutions. Prominent themes included focusing on customer satisfaction, collaborating and communicating with all stakeholders, and defining boundaries and empowering people within those boundaries. The findings from this research have implications for positive social change, including improved work-life balance, morale, and productivity of software and enterprise architects through streamlining development and maintenance activities

When Can Employees Have a Family Life? The Effects of Daily Workload and Affect on Work-Family Conflict and Social Behaviors at Home

This article presents a longitudinal examination of antecedents and outcomes of work-to-family conflict. A total of 106 employees participating in an experience-sampling study were asked to respond to daily surveys both at work and at home, and their spouses were interviewed daily via telephone for a period of 2 weeks. Intraindividual analyses revealed that employees ’ perceptions of workload predicted work-to-family conflict over time, even when controlling for the number of hours spent at work. Workload also influenced affect at work, which in turn influenced affect at home. Finally, perhaps the most interesting finding in this study was that employees ’ behaviors in the family domain (reported by spouses) were predicted by the employees ’ perceptions of work-to-family conflict and their positive affect at home

Chancengerechtigkeit durch Bildung – Chancengerechtigkeit in der Bildung (Auszug)

Der hier mit freundlicher Genehmigung des AWO Bundesverbands abgedruckte Text ist ein Auszug aus der Broschüre: Arbeiterwohlfahrt Bundesverband (Hrsg.): Standpunkte 2006. Chancengerechtigkeit durch Bildung – Chancengerechtigkeit in der Bildung, Bonn 2006. Unser Bildungssystem für die Kinder im Alter von 6 bis 16 Jahren wird den Herausforderungen der Zukunft nicht gerecht. Ein Umsteuern ist dringend notwendig, da ohne Bildung der Wandel in die Wissensgesellschaft nicht zu bewältigen ist. Bildung, Qualifikation und Kompetenzen und das Erlernen von Diskurs- und Konfliktfähigkeit entscheiden über die beruflichen und gesellschaftlichen Chancen eines jeden Menschen und davon abhängig über seine Zukunftschancen. Bildung bedeutet Entwicklung der Persönlichkeit, der Identität. Bildung bedeutet aber auch, die gemeinschaftsfähige Persönlichkeit zu gestalten. Und somit bekommt Bildung gerade in der Lebensphase der 6- bis 16-Jährigen über die eher traditionelle Dimension hinaus auch einen emanzipatorischen Charakter. Wenn Bildung also für den Einzelnen diese entscheidende Rolle spielt, dann bekommt die öffentliche Verantwortung für dieses Bildungswesen eine ganz zentrale Bedeutung. (DIPF/Orig.

Associations of Facial Proportionality, Attractiveness, and Character Traits.

Background: Facial proportionality and symmetry are positively associated with perceived levels of facial attractiveness. Objective: The aims of this study were to confirm and extend the association of proportionality with perceived levels of attractiveness and character traits and determine differences in attractiveness and character ratings between "anomalous" and "typical" faces using a large dataset. Methods: Ratings of 597 unique individuals from the Chicago Face Database were used. A formula was developed as a proxy of relative horizontal proportionality, where a proportionality score of "0" indicated perfect proportionality and more negative scores indicated less proportionality. Faces were categorized as "anomalous" or "typical" by 2 independent reviewers based on physical features. Results: Across the ratings for all faces, Spearman correlations revealed greater proportionality was associated with attractiveness ( ρ = 0.292, P \u3c 0.001) and trustworthiness ( ρ = 0.193, P \u3c 0.001), while lesser proportionality was associated with impressions of anger (ρ = 0.132, P = 0.001), dominance (ρ = 0.259, P \u3c 0.001), and threateningness ( ρ = 0.234, P \u3c 0.001). Mann-Whitney U tests revealed the typical cohort had significantly higher levels of proportionality (-13.98 versus -15.14, P = 0.030) and ratings of attractiveness (3.39 versus 2.99, P \u3c 0.001) and trustworthiness (3.48 versus 3.35, P \u3c 0.001). Conclusions: This study demonstrated that facial proportionality is not only significantly associated with higher ratings of attractiveness, but also associated with judgements of trustworthiness. Proportionality plays a role in evoking negative attributions of personality characteristics to people with facial anomalies

NUScon: a community-driven platform for quantitative evaluation of nonuniform sampling in NMR

Although the concepts of nonuniform sampling (NUS) and non-Fourier spectral reconstruction in multidimensional NMR began to emerge 4 decades ago (Bodenhausen and Ernst, 1981; Barna and Laue, 1987), it is only relatively recently that NUS has become more commonplace. Advantages of NUS include the ability to tailor experiments to reduce data collection time and to improve spectral quality, whether through detection of closely spaced peaks (i.e., “resolution”) or peaks of weak intensity (i.e., “sensitivity”). Wider adoption of these methods is the result of improvements in computational performance, a growing abundance and flexibility of software, support from NMR spectrometer vendors, and the increased data sampling demands imposed by higher magnetic fields. However, the identification of best practices still remains a significant and unmet challenge. Unlike the discrete Fourier transform, non-Fourier methods used to reconstruct spectra from NUS data are nonlinear, depend on the complexity and nature of the signals, and lack quantitative or formal theory describing their performance. Seemingly subtle algorithmic differences may lead to significant variabilities in spectral qualities and artifacts. A community-based critical assessment of NUS challenge problems has been initiated, called the “Nonuniform Sampling Contest” (NUScon), with the objective of determining best practices for processing and analyzing NUS experiments. We address this objective by constructing challenges from NMR experiments that we inject with synthetic signals, and we process these challenges using workflows submitted by the community. In the initial rounds of NUScon our aim is to establish objective criteria for evaluating the quality of spectral reconstructions. We present here a software package for performing the quantitative analyses, and we present the results from the first two rounds of NUScon. We discuss the challenges that remain and present a roadmap for continued community-driven development with the ultimate aim of providing best practices in this rapidly evolving field. The NUScon software package and all data from evaluating the challenge problems are hosted on the NMRbox platform

Trajectories of Big Five Personality Traits: A Coordinated Analysis of 16 Longitudinal Samples

This study assessed change in self‐reported Big Five personality traits. We conducted a coordinated integrative data analysis using data from 16 longitudinal samples, comprising a total sample of over 60 000 participants. We coordinated models across multiple datasets and fit identical multi‐level growth models to assess and compare the extent of trait change over time. Quadratic change was assessed in a subset of samples with four or more measurement occasions. Across studies, the linear trajectory models revealed declines in conscientiousness, extraversion, and openness. Non‐linear models suggested late‐life increases in neuroticism. Meta‐analytic summaries indicated that the fixed effects of personality change are somewhat heterogeneous and that the variability in trait change is partially explained by sample age, country of origin, and personality measurement method. We also found mixed evidence for predictors of change, specifically for sex and baseline age. This study demonstrates the importance of coordinated conceptual replications for accelerating the accumulation of robust and reliable findings in the lifespan developmental psychological sciences. © 2020 European Association of Personality PsychologyPeer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/156004/1/per2259.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/156004/2/per2259-sup-0001-Data_S1.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/156004/3/per2259-sup-0002-Open_Practices_Disclosure_Form.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/156004/4/per2259_am.pd