We investigate the group processes involved in effort estimation in the context of Project Management. The groups considered are formed by “experts” (people with specific technical competence) and “non-experts” (people with less specific technical competence, usually experts in related fields), because the typically complementary bias of the two classes contribute to a more balanced estimate. I...

Component-based development has emerged as a system engineering approach that promises rapid software development with fewer resources. Yet, improved reuse and reduced cost benefits from software components can only be achieved in practice if the components provide reliable services, thereby rendering component analysis and testing a key activity. This paper discusses various issues that can ar...

Dependencies among software artifacts are very useful for various software development and maintenance activities such as change impact analysis and effort estimation. In the past, the focus on artifact dependencies has been at the design and code level rather than at the requirements level. This is due to the difficulties in identifying dependencies in a text-based requirements specification. ...

With component-based reuse, software development is achieved through the planned integration of pre-existing software components. Commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) Based Development (CBD) is one of the systematic reuse approaches promising gains in cost, operational quality, functionality, time to market and maintenance overheads. This is an increasingly popular paradigm for software development,...

OBJECTIVES To predict the incremental lifetime effects, costs, and cost effectiveness of using human papillomavirus testing to triage women with borderline or mildly dyskaryotic cervical smear results for immediate colposcopy. DESIGN Modelling study. SETTING Three centres participating in NHS pilot studies, United Kingdom. Population Women aged 25-64 with borderline or mildly dyskaryotic ce...

BACKGROUND The present study was designed in quasi-experiment to assess adoption of the essential clauses of particular clinical laboratory quality management requirements based on international organization for standardization (ISO 15189) in hospital laboratories and to evaluate the cost effectiveness of compliance to ISO 15189. METHODS The quality management intervention based on ISO 15189 ...

Software effort estimates is an important part of software development work and provides essential input to project feasibility analyses, bidding, budgeting and planning. Analogy-based estimates models emerge as a promising approach, with comparable accuracy to arithmetic methods, and it is potentially easier to understand and apply. Studies show all the models are sensitive to the quality and ...

cost optimization of the reinforced concrete cantilever soil retaining wall of a given height satisfying some structural and geotechnical design constraints is performed utilizing harmony search and improved harmony search algorithms. the objective function considered is the cost of the structure, and design is based on aci 318-05. this function is minimized subjected to design constraints. a n...

cost of quality analysis is emerged as an effective tool for the industrial managers for pinpointing the deficiencies in the system as well as for identifying the improvement areas by highlighting the cost reduction opportunities. however , this analysis will be fully effective only if it is further extended to identify the cost incurred in ensuring quality in all areas of the supply chain incl...

The Markov random field (MRF) theory has been accepted as a highly effective framework for designing noise-tolerant nanometer digital VLSI circuits. In MRF-based design, proper feedback lines are used to control noise and keep the circuits in their valid states. However, this methodology has encountered two major problems that have limited the application of highly noise immune MRF-based circui...