Factors used in the selection of packaged software in small businesses: Views of owners and managers

Due to their limited human, technical, and financial resources, small firms usually purchase packaged software to meet their organizational needs for IS. The selection is usually made either by the owner or a manager. A key question is whether they use the same set of criteria. This study examines the question, and finds that owners and managers of small businesses have different views of the importance of the factors in their selection decision. Owners tend to take a more strategic view of software package selection, weigh technical factors more heavily, take more factors into consideration, and consider those factors in a more serious manner than managers. Therefore, different frameworks may be needed in the software package selection process by owners and managers of small businesses.     

Package Coupling Measurement in Object-Oriented Software

The grouping of correlated classes into a package helps in better organization of modern object-oriented software. The quality of such packages needs to be measured so as to estimate their utilization. In this paper, new package coupling metrics are proposed, which also take into consideration the hierarchical structure of packages and direction of connections among package elements. The proposed measures have been validated theoretically as well as empirically using 18 packages taken from two open source software systems. The results obtained from this study show strong correlation between package coupling and understandability of the package which suggests that proposed metrics could be further used to represent other external software quality factors.     

DEVELOPMENT OF AN INTELLIGENT PRODUCT DESIGN SYSTEM: INTEGRATION STRATEGIES

Conventional computer-aided design (CAD) packages have drastically reduced the workload of the human designer and shortened the product design cycle. However, the degree of effort and volume of information required to use these tools limit their use to the later stages of design. Intelligent computer-aided design (ICAD) systems have sought to provide a more complete design tool to assist the designer in all phases of design. ICAD systems incorporate conventional CAD elements as well as knowledge engineering constructs. The level of integration between different components of an ICAD system determines its usefulness. Most commercial intelligent CAD packages are tied to a specific set of CAD tools, restricting their application domains. This dependence on specific software tools can be reduced by using general purpose modules to interface with available CAD packages. This paper discusses a method of introducing knowledge engineering technology to help develop an advanced intelligent product design system by integrating ICAD's Concept Modeller with SDRC's l-DEAS package for engineering product design. This integration is necessary because neither the Concept Modeller nor the I-DEAS package provides any unified design environment where users can access both symbolic and numerical design tools as needed to carry out design synthesis and analysis activities. Interfacing engineering design and knowledge processing together is not an easy task. The task is further complicated since it needs to be done only by those who have enough knowledge of both technologies, and also because it may result in reorganization of the traditional design process altogether. The proposed intelligent product design system uses artificial intelligence techniques to take care of human experts knowledge and it advocates the use of several commercial software packages that come from a variety of sources (and are proven to be robust) to perform design synthesis in a cost-efficient and timely manner. The technique described here is relatively easy to implement and is well suited to industrial needs.     

Framework for evaluation and selection of the software packages: A hybrid knowledge based system approach

Evaluation and selection of the software packages is complicated and time consuming decision making process. Selection of inappropriate software package can turn out to be costly and adversely affects business processes and functioning of the organization. In this paper we describe (i) generic methodology for software selection, (ii) software evaluation criteria, and (iii) hybrid knowledge based system (HKBS) approach to assist decision makers in evaluation and selection of the software packages. The proposed HKBS approach employs an integrated rule based and case based reasoning techniques. Rule based reasoning is used to capture user needs of the software package and formulate a problem case. Case based reasoning is used to retrieve and compare candidate software packages with the user needs of the package. This paper also evaluates and compares HKBS approach with the widely used existing software evaluation techniques such as analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and weighted scoring method (WSM).     

The emergence of the system configurator

As companies move from custom built software to commercial packages, the skills and mindsets required to make applications work have changed. In their emerging role, system configurators reverse the traditional process steps of high-level project management. For example, with a commercial software package, these steps often start with installation, rather than end with it. In this environment, system configurators must have both a strong knowledge of the software package and a keen understanding of the business needs. Having strong players in this pivotal role can mean the difference between successful and unsuccessful system deployments.     

A simulation model of a sulphuric acid production process as an integrated part of an energy system

Power plant process simulation software is well-suited for the modelling of energy systems and more importantly, tools for analysing the energy efficiency are often built into the software. This work presents the development of a simulation model for a sulphuric acid plant using a commercial software package for power plant process simulation. This will be of value to for instance small consultant and engineering companies involved with audits and analysis of energy systems. For small sized companies the cost of acquiring and maintaining many different specialised software packages will be noticeable. However, companies involved with audits and analysis of energy systems will in most cases have access to at least one software package for power plant process calculations. The use of this kind of software for also modelling chemical plants would be valuable to these companies. The results of this work shows that it is possible to use an inexpensive but powerful power plant process simulation software for modelling a common chemical process as a part of a large energy system.     

The application of microcomputer data-base management packages in medical research

The role of microcomputer data-base management (DBMS) packages in the management of medical research studies has been reviewed. The features of commercial DBMS packages which are of particular advantage have been identified.A bench-mark test, resembling stages in the conduct of a research project, was constructed and four commercial packages compared in their performance of it. The packages varied in facilities offered, and it was found that the more sophisticated ones took longer to set up to perform the task. In use the less sophisticated packages were faster, but could become tedious to use with regular tasks and more error prone with complex tasks.The selection of a DBMS package depends on the potential application. This will involve a detailed assessment of the task to be performed: as a general rule a sophisticated package will only be warranted if the study is both complex and large. In practice research departments may benefit from more than one package.     

Influence of Federal Disaster Assistance on Family Business Survival and Success

This study examines the impact of federal disaster assistance on the survival and success of small family‐owned businesses with fewer than 500 employees from 1996 to 1999. Small family‐owned business owners were defined as those who had been in business at least a year, had spent a least 6 hours a week or a minimum of 312 hours annually working in the business, had lived with at least one family member and had fewer than 500 employees. This study suggests firms located in counties receiving more disaster assistance are not more likely to survive, however these firms are more likely to realize positive changes in revenue than firms located in counties receiving less disaster assistance. Businesses located in an economically vulnerable rural county, those engaged in family to business resource intermingling and those transferring more business income to the household were more likely to survive. Larger businesses, those headed by women and those transferring more income from the business to the family were most likely to succeed.     

一种基于Internet的JAR包使用信息收集方法

随着软件复用技术的发展,Internet上出现了大量可以被利用的软件资源,如Web Services, JAR包等。但是,这些软件资源常常缺乏必要的描述信息和使用说明。为此,提出了一种基于Internet的JAR包使用信息收集方法,以帮助用户检索并整理Internet上已经存在的JAR包描述信息和用户使用评论,辅助软件复用的成功进行。基于该方法,设计并实现了北京大学软件资源库JAR包使用信息收集子系统。该系统目前已经为6000余个JAR包资源收集、整理了相关的描述和评论信息。     

An assessment of package–organisation misalignment: institutional and ontological structures

Even with today's ‘best practice’ software, commercial packages continue to pose significant alignment challenges for many organisations. This paper proposes a conceptual framework, based on institutional theory and systems ontology, to assess the misalignments between package functionality and organisational requirements. We suggest that these misalignments can arise from incompatibility in the externally imposed or voluntarily adopted structures embedded in the organisation and package, as well as differences in the way the meaning of organisational reality is ontologically represented in the deep or surface structure of packages. The synthesis of the institutional-ontological dimensions leads us to identify four types of misalignments with varying degrees of severity – imposed-deep, imposed-surface, voluntary-deep, and voluntary-surface – and to predict their likely resolution. We test the predictions using over 400 misalignments from package implementations at three different sites. The findings support the predictions: the majority of imposed-deep misalignments were resolved via package customisation. Imposed-surface and voluntary-deep misalignments were more often resolved via organisational adaptation and voluntary-surface misalignments were almost always resolved via organisational adaptation. The extent of project success also appeared to be influenced by the number of misalignments and the proportion of imposed-deep misalignments. We conclude by suggesting strategies that implementing organisations and package vendors may pursue.     

Statgraphics : Neil W. Polhemus and the Statistical Graphics Corporation. Rockville, MD: STSC. Release No. 2.0, $795.00

Several statistical software packages are now commercially available for microcomputers. The quality and usability of these software packages vary dramatically. The purpose of this paper is to review the package STATGRAPHICS utilizing the statistical software model developed by Ansorge, Wise, and Plake (1985). The paper will address quality and usability dimensions of STATGRAPHICS from the vantage point and needs of an educational researcher.     

Selecting and Implementing Project Management Software

As the importance of project management software increases in industry, commerce, and government, so does the choice of project management software packages. However, many organizations select such packages according to how many features they advertise rather than how well they serve their organization's business function. This article presents a model for selecting and implementing a project management software package.     

A methodology for the automation of medium or small manufacturing companies

Many products are produced by discrete manufacturing plants in lots of 100 items or fewer. Currently, most small and medium-sized manufacturing companies are far from computer-integrated automation. New computer-integrated manufacturing systems with their associated hardwares require tremendous initial investments that are beyond the means of most small and medium-sized companies. In this paper we investigate how these companies can upgrade and automate their existing facilities at a minimal and viable cost. In Section 2 we discuss main references (books and trade journals) that contain detailed information on software packages for automation. In Section 3 we discuss the criteria for selecting software packages. In Section 4 we discuss how to use the obtained information to create a data base of different alternatives. In Section 5 we outline different areas of manufacturing. For illustrations, we discuss manufacturing planning, intelligent systems, and computer areas. In Section 6 we discuss a new method for the selection of the best alternative using the data base. The method is a simple interactive paired comparison method based on a computer package developed on a personal computer.     

Software Systems for Computer Graphics

This paper describes some software packages and programming systems for computer graphics applications, in the process considering software features for both passive and interactive graphics. It examines the structure both of subroutine libraries for use with some base language and of complete programming languages, and outlines the advantages and disadvantages of each, along with facilities that should be present in any software package.     

Modeling the growth of complex software function dependency networks

Software engineering efforts can potentially benefit much from a good understanding of the structures of existing software systems and the processes governing their development. Towards that end, we study software systems by means of the complex network analysis framework. We model a software package as a network, with nodes representing the functions in the package and edges representing the dependencies among the functions. Our empirical analysis of five widely-adopted open-source software packages reveals a set of interesting features of such networks, which cannot be adequately reproduced by existing complex network models. We then set out to develop a new network growth model, explicitly imitating generally-advocated software development principals, such as divide-and-conquer, modularization, high intra-module cohesion, and low inter-module coupling. Results of our analytical derivations and numeric studies show that our model can more closely reproduce the particular features exhibited by real-world software packages, thus hopefully better explaining the phenomena of concern.     

Using Scrum to guide the execution of software process improvement in small organizations

For software process improvement - SPI - there are few small organizations using models that guide the management and deployment of their improvement initiatives. This is largely because a lot of these models do not consider the special characteristics of small businesses, nor the appropriate strategies for deploying an SPI initiative in this type of organization. It should also be noted that the models which direct improvement implementation for small settings do not present an explicit process with which to organize and guide the internal work of the employees involved in the implementation of the improvement opportunities. In this paper we propose a lightweight process, which takes into account appropriate strategies for this type of organization. Our proposal, known as a “Lightweight process to incorporate improvements”, uses the philosophy of the Scrum agile method, aiming to give detailed guidelines for supporting the management and performance of the incorporation of improvement opportunities within processes and their putting into practice in small companies. We have applied the proposed process in two small companies by means of the case study research method, and from the initial results, we have observed that it is indeed suitable for small businesses.     

Rural landscape visualisation from GIS databases: a comparison of approaches,options and problems

As public participation in environmental decision-making becomes more prevalent, there is a growing need to communicate effectively with a non-expert audience. Visual presentation has been identified as an effective means of communicating landscape-related information, particularly due to the increasing ease with which computer visualisation techniques can utilise GIS data. Such data are already widely used when assessing environmental and landscape issues, and there are several different ways in which visualisations may be produced; this paper sets out a typology encompassing the most popular techniques, and, using a common GIS database, proceeds to assesses a number of different visualisation software packages. Three primary issues are considered: data needs; ease of use; and quality of output. Examples of visualisations produced in each software package are provided for comparison.     

A comparative study of the reliability of nine statistical software packages

The reliabilities of nine software packages commonly used in performing statistical analysis are assessed and compared. The (American) National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) data sets are used to evaluate the performance of these software packages with regard to univariate summary statistics, one-way ANOVA, linear regression, and nonlinear regression. Previous research has examined various versions of these software packages using the NIST data sets, but typically with fewer software packages than used in this study. This study provides insight into a relative comparison of a wide variety of software packages including two free statistical software packages, basic and advanced statistical software packages, and the popular Excel package. Substantive improvements from previous software reliability assessments are noted. Plots of principal components of a measure of the correct number of significant digits reveal how these packages tend to cluster for ANOVA and nonlinear regression.