In today’s competitive business environment, it is extremely important to offer customers exactly the products they want. Software product lines have the potential to enable companies to offer a ...large variety of products while still being able to manage the complexity caused by this increased number of products. But offering a large range of variants does not necessarily mean increased profits, as many manufacturing companies had to notice in the early 1990ies. The task of Product Portfolio Planning is the development of a product portfolio that optimally satisfies customer demands and at the same time restricts the number of products offered. Quality Function Deployment (QFD) is a well-known and successfully used Quality Management method that can help companies to identify true customer needs and the features needed to fulfil these needs. This paper demonstrates how QFD can be used for Product Portfolio Planning, thus offering potentially great benefits.
QFD for customer-focused requirements engineering Herzwurm, G.; Schockert, S.; Pietsch, W.
Proceedings. 11th IEEE International Requirements Engineering Conference, 2003,
2003
Conference Proceeding
Here an overview of the state of the art of QFD in software development or also called software QFD is given. The differences between classic QFD in manufacturing industries and software QFD are ...described. Following certain software specific QFD models (Zultner, Shindo, Ohmori, Herzwurm and Schockert), which can be considered as the most appreciated ones in theory as well as in practice, are introduced. Experiences in practice with these software QFD models are presented as well. Finally, through explaining the main principles of a special QFD variant for e-commerce, called continuous QFD (CQFD), we will show that QFD is suitable for planning electronic business applications as well.
Methodology of a CASE-tool assessment Hierholzer, A.; Herzwurm, G.
Proceedings of the Fourth International Symposium on Assessment of Software Tools,
1996
Conference Proceeding
This paper investigates the efficiency of international CASE tools, which were offered on the German market in 1994. In considering a catalogue of more than 400 criteria, which has been developed in ...cooperation with industry, 17 CASE tools are evaluated in the scope of a case study. Both the specific requirements of a CASE user and the common requirements derived from the ISO 9000 are taken into account as well.
A considerable number of software suppliers report improvements in product and service quality, development costs and time to market achieved with the help of the ISO 9000 standards. Nevertheless, ...the ISO 9000 family has received unfavourable criticism in journals, textbooks and at software quality conferences. The paper summarizes, discusses and reviews eleven of the most popular arguments against the ISO 9000 standards. The review of the criticism is based on findings of two empirical surveys among European software suppliers that have implemented an ISO 9000 quality system. The paper concludes with suggestions and guidelines for advances in software quality management concepts, such as the ISO 9000 family, CMM, BOOTSTRAP and the emerging SPICE standard.
Depending on the perspectives and the stage within the life cycle IT product are viewed and managed differently. A model is presented that integrates different perspectives and stages serving as an ...aid for the analysis of business models purposeful and focused positioning of IT-products. Four generic business models are analysed with regard to the product management function in general and the positioning field for IT-products specifically: off-the-shelf, license plus service, project, and system service.
Basically all companies today go beyond the development of single products and offer set(s) of similar and related products. In marketing, one such set is often called a product line. Nevertheless, ...still today most products are not yet engineered as product lines, i.e., they are not yet derived from a single platform. In this paper, we explore the relation of these two forms of product lines. It is shown that under certain circumstances engineered and marketed software product line subsume different products. This paper shows how these two perspectives differ and why a difference in products between these perspectives may be appropriate from a company perspective. Finally, it is argued that activities currently subsumed under product management and scoping should be closely coordinated, allowing companies to optimize their product portfolios since decision-making is facilitated
Presents the results of two surveys among European software houses. One of the goals was to find out whether software companies have actually achieved software process improvements via ISO 9000. The ...first survey was conducted among 20 German software houses that have received an ISO 9001 certificate. The study focuses on five elements of an ISO 9000 quality system: code reviews and inspections software testing, product and process measurements, measurement of quality costs, and demonstration of quality improvements. Many software houses included in our first survey have not carried out any modifications of the five elements. Thus, it seemed that ISO 9000 had not led to significant improvements. Nevertheless, nearly 100% of the companies would decide in favor of implementing an ISO 9000 quality system once again. We decided to conduct a second study to gain a better understanding of the software process improvements achieved via ISO 9000. We analyzed experience reports and conducted interviews with quality managers from a total of 36 European software houses. It turned out that software houses have indeed achieved process improvements. Unfortunately, most software houses are not able to quantify the benefits of implementing an ISO 9000 quality system. We identified ten key success factors that the respondents of our studies considered to be the most helpful when implementing an ISO 9000 quality system. Astonishingly, only two of the ten factors are explicit requirements of ISO 9001. This shows that it is necessary to implement a more comprehensive approach to achieve substantial software process improvements.
To compare morphologic data of the talus using magnetic resonance images with previously reported values of the humeral head and the glenoid as a potential graft source for both the humeral head as ...well as glenoid reconstruction in the setting of concomitant glenoid and humeral head defects.
All magnetic resonance images of the ankle were reviewed for assessment of the morphology and variation of the talus among individuals. Patients with post-traumatic, osteoarthritic, or surgical changes to the distal tibia about the mid- or hind- foot, or patients with incomplete medical records were excluded. Radiographic parameters that were measured included the maximum vertical height (MVH), the height to the talar neck, the radius of curvature (ROC) of the talar dome, ROC of the subtalar joint, and the maximum medial-to-lateral width of the talar dome. Demographic data also were collected on each individual. Statistical analysis was performed via a linear regression model with backwards elimination to determine which demographic data correlated most strongly with talar anthropometric values.
A total of 82 study patients met inclusion criteria (59 male, 23 female; mean age 40.91 ± 14.69 years). Sex was found have a positive correlation of the following talar dimensions: MVH (P = .039), talar dome ROC (P < .001), and subtalar joint ROC (p = 0.001). Height was the most positive correlation for medial-to-lateral width (P < .001), height to the talar neck (P = .004), and also correlate for MVH (P = .004). Body mass index was found to have multicollinearity and was therefore not used as a variable.
Allograft talus appears to be a viable graft, as demonstrated in this anthropometric study for both reconstruction of the glenoid and humeral head when cases of bipolar glenohumeral bone loss are present.
This study aims to further evaluate potential allograft donor sites for bipolar lesions.
We reviewed the results an average of fifty months (range, twenty-four to 120 months) after the use of thirty-five allografts in thirty patients during primary or revision total knee replacement. ...Twenty-nine femoral-head allografts, five distal femoral allografts, and one proximal tibial allograft were used in conjunction with a long-stemmed implant to reconstruct large osseous defects. The patients were evaluated clinically, radiographically, and subjectively (with use of a questionnaire). Twenty-six (87 per cent) of the thirty patients had a good or excellent clinical result, and no revisions were necessary. As none of the patients had collapse of the graft, subsidence of the implant, or revision, we believe that the outcome of treatment with a femoral-head allograft, particularly in association with a component inserted with cement, is excellent. Four non-porous-coated components were placed without cement on structural allografts. Radiographically, three of those components subsided, but none of the three needed revision and two were associated with a good clinical result. Our current practice is to cement components in all arthroplasties involving grafting. Our findings suggest that the use of a stemmed component reduces the stress on the allograft, host bone, and fixation interface. In addition, such a component contributes to the longevity of a total knee replacement associated with a bone graft. Additional studies with long-term follow-up are necessary to confirm this outcome.
