1,721,016 research outputs found

    Advanced queueing models for quantitative business process analysis

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    \u3cp\u3eQuantitative analysis of business processes facilitates the computation of quantitative properties of a business process, such as the average sojourn time and cost of cases of the process. Moreover, it allows for what-if analysis, by enabling the computation of such properties for alternative business process designs, without requiring those designs to be implemented in practice. This paper presents a novel technique for quantitative analysis that is both fast and generally applicable. The technique is developed as an extension of the state-of-the-art in queueing network analysis, by lifting some of the restrictions that are imposed by existing techniques. In particular, it enables precise quantitative analysis of business process models that contain many-to-many relations between tasks and resources (via roles). As a consequence, the technique presented in this paper allows for quantitative analysis that is more generally applicable than existing queueing network analysis techniques and only takes a fraction of the execution time required by existing simulation techniques. In doing so, it paves the way to advanced analysis techniques, such as prescriptive analytics.\u3c/p\u3

    Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis

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    The 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

    Sustaining Agile Beyond Adoption

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    Agile approaches are adopted in industry to improve outcomes from software development, and are increasingly the subject of research studies. However, adoption is not the end of the story. Agile requires on-going change and commitment in order to become sustainable and embedded within teams and organisations. This study explores current perceptions of post-adoptive agility. We asked 50 practitioners ‘what does agile sustainability mean to you?’. Analysis of practitioner comments identified four themes: being completely agile, independent, focused on business value and need, and consistent across time. Post-adoptive agile is an under-researched area, there is inconsistent use of terminology, and there is a gap between practitioners’ and researchers’ perceptions about what is important for sustaining agile

    Continuous experimentation scenarios : A case study in e-commerce

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    Controlled experiments on software variants enable e-commerce companies to increase sales by providing user-adapted functionality. Our goal is to understand how the context of experimentation influences tool support. We performed a case study at Apptus that develops algorithms for e-commerce. We investigated how the case company uses experiments through five semi-structured interviews. We identified four main scenarios of experimentation and found that there are stark differences in tool support for them. The scenarios illustrate that the aptness of tool support for experiments depend on four characteristics: (1) what the goal of the experiment is; validate or optimize, (2) whether the experiment is performed internally in the organisation or externally, (3) whether decisions are taken automatically or manually, and finally (4) whether the experiment should be repeated or is a singleton. These insight can be used by practitioners with an interest in efficient experimentation and to form a basis for further research into a taxonomy of experiments for software

    A Large Agile Organization on Its Journey Towards DevOps

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    Software companies are increasingly adopting DevOps and continuous software engineering practices to support short feedback loops, gain better control and visibility over deployments, and decrease the need for manual work with the help of automated processes. While adopting DevOps practices can lead to various benefits, companies also face many kinds of challenges in the transition. This short paper presents the results of a case study conducted in a large Danish software service house about their experiences of transitioning towards DevOps. We got 30 completed survey responses and interviewed four persons in software engineering related roles. We present the current state of the company with challenges and suggestions to improvement. To reach DevOps, the company will need a major cultural change. However, the respondents were positive that the adoption of continuous software engineering practices would mitigate some of their prevailing challenges.</p

    Variations on the Author

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    “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

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    We 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

    A toolbox for the development and implementation of value based care pathways

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    \u3cp\u3eIn this paper, we present a method for the development and implementation of Value Based Care Pathways. The method is based on an integration of three existing care pathway development methods, the concepts of the Value Based Healthcare paradigm, and practical knowledge obtained from interviews with experts in care pathway development in practice. This paper furthermore presents an interactive toolbox that facilitates the use of the method in practice and an expert evaluation of the toolbox.\u3c/p\u3

    Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts

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    We 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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