Software Process Improvement (SPI) has become more and more important during the past ten years, since competition is increasingly determined by the proportion of software products and services. Over the years, many different SPI approaches have been developed; most of them are either best-practice-oriented approaches or continuous improvement approaches, which require an accurate assessment pr...

In this paper, we evaluate the Analysis of Competing Hypotheses (ACH) method using a normative Bayesian probabilistic framework. We describe the ACH method and present an example of how to use it to structure an analytic problem. We then show how to represent the same analytic problem using Bayesian networks and compare the result with that using the ACH method. We discuss how Bayesian networks...

You Need Violence and Sincerity: Godard and the Manufacturing of a Revolutionary Cinema

Abstract This work presents a method for the definition of process capability profiles lined up with the specific business model of small software companies. The developed method is made up of a process, artifacts and guides that assist to obtain process profiles, considering the specific characteristics (business model, enterprise growth stage and value discipline) of each small software compa...

Going to the cinema, watching a movie and thereby eating popcorn is an enjoyable event. Nobody would consider watching the movie and eating popcorn as cumbersome or exhausting multitasking. This is due to our capabilities of carrying out small, well trained tasks (like eating) in parallel. However, when interacting with digital devices, we hardly use this skill and have to switch our focus and ...

The literature on software quality research to date has shown a lack of empirical insight into the use of methods for achieving quality in a real context. Further investigation is required if we want to increase our understanding on how to improve software quality practices. In particular, we wanted to explore the key factors which impact software improvement practices in a case study, by study...

the lot," which, in " movie " parlance, means within the confines of the plant. But many accidents occur "out on location" (^way from the studio). Again, the emergency clinic plays an important part. In the filming of " The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse," for example, a field hospital was installed when a doctor and nurse were kept busy for five days on all day duty. This was necessitated by ...

Models of cinema demand have tended to employ aggregate data and focus on price and income as key variables. Surprisingly, the effects of travel time and location have not been formally investigated. The authors do so, following developments in the environmental economics literature, by presenting estimates of individual travel cost models for multiplex and nonmultiplex cinemas. A key finding i...

Multilocus hybrid zone (HZ) studies predate genomics by decades. The power of early methods is becoming apparent and now large datasets are commonplace. Relating introgression along a chromosome to evolutionary process is challenging: although reduced introgression regions may indicate speciation genes, this pattern may be obscured by asymmetric introgression of linked invasive genes. Further, ...

The transfer of fleas between the house mouse, Mus musculus, and the midday jird, Meriones meridianus, through social contacts was studied by performing interspecific dyadic encounters on a neutral arena. M. meridianus and M. musculus exchanged parasites through social contacts. The intensity of this exchange was higher between mice and adult male and young jirds than between mice and adult fem...