1,720,960 research outputs found
Assessment and impact analysis for aligning business processes and software systems
No full textBusiness processes and existing software systems must be aligned so that software systems can adequately support the business processes in order to be effectively used within them. The alignment characteristic needs to be considered even during the execution of an evolution process. In particular, a strict relationship exists between the evolution of a legacy system and that of the supported business process. Therefore, the requirements for evolving a software system embedded in a business process are to be defined on the basis of the change needing to be performed on the process activities. In fact, any modification performed in the business process activities and/or supporting software system may impact the process activities in terms of input/output and/or purpose of the software system and, therefore, cause misalignment. A coarse grained strategy is proposed for detecting misalignment between software systems and supported business processes when a change is executed. In addition, the strategy supports the identification of all the objects, either software system components or process activities, affected by a change and needing to be considered during the evolution process, for keeping the alignment and ensuring the technological support to the business process. The strategy proposes the exploitation of quality parameters, for codifying the alignment concept, and impact analysis techniques, for propagating the change and identifying all the objects affected by a change and requiring new evolution intervention
Evolving Legacy System towards eBusiness
No full textIn e-business, addressing the technical issues alone is not enough to drive the evolution of existing legacy applications, but it is necessary to consider problems concerning the strict relationship that exists between the evolution of the legacy system and the evolution of the e-business process. To fulfill this purpose, this chapter proposes a strategy for extracting the requirements for a legacy system evolution from the requirements of the e-business process evolution. The strategy includes a toolkit composed of a set of decision tables and a measurement framework, both referring to the organization, business processes, and legacy software systems. The decision tables allow the identification of the processes to be evolved, the actions to be performed on them and their activities, and the strategies to be adopted for evolving the information systems. The measurement framework aims at achieving a greater understanding of the processes and related problems, taking into account organizational and technological issues
Supporting decisions on the adoption of re-engineering technologies
No full textEvolving software systems requires their preliminary analysis and assessment. In particular, information on the performance and costs of software system components must be gathered for identifying the most appropriate strategy for their evolution. A critical point is finding suitable data gathering means to effectively support the decision makers. This paper presents a strategy composed of a methodological approach and supporting toolkit to help maintainers in the evolution process. The strategy integrates measurement and decision-making tools, and critiquing techniques. It analyzes software systems and identifies a set of alternative evolution approaches by mapping critiques to specific innovation actions. The proposed strategy is validated by case studies conducted with a major software enterprise and Public Administration
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
A Framework for Measuring Business Processes based on GQM
No full textThe evolution of business processes and supporting software systems requires their analysis and assessment from both quantitative and qualitative points of view. The analysis and evaluation activities need the support of methodological and technological tools, customizable to the innovation requirements of the chosen processes and supporting software systems. This paper proposes a measurement framework based on the Goal-Question-Metric (GQM) paradigm. It is generally applicable to any business process and supporting software system after its instantiation. The collaborative software environment WebEv, Web for the Evaluation, is proposed for facilitating the collection and elaboration of the required measures. Finally, the paper describes the application of the measurement framework in a real context
Technology-driven business evolution
No full textInnovating the business processes and supporting software systems of an enterprise requires their preliminary analysis and assessment. In particular, data concerning the performance and costs of activities and processes must be gathered in order to identify candidates for innovation. A critical point is finding a suitable presentation means for the gathered data in order to effectively support decision makers. This paper presents two case studies performed by applying a strategy, named Joint Evolution of business Processes and software Systems (JEPS), for innovating business processes and their supporting systems. JEPS integrates measurement, decision-making, and critiquing techniques for analyzing business processes, identifying activities and software systems to be innovated, and mapping critiques onto specific innovation actions. JEPS is supported by a software environment, named WebEv+, for managing the assessment and evaluation tasks, and the modeling and critiquing of the business processes. The paper discusses two case studies regarding two different organizations in the Local Government domain. The analysis of the organization highlighted improvement goals and technological enhancement needs, and permitted the identification of the business processes and software systems to be evolved. © 2005 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserve
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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