Abstract:A balanced scorecard (BSC) framework for a factory that develops software for banking was proposed by us at the end of 2015 to ensure its sustainability, and was focused on improving its productivity and cost. Based on this framework, the aim of this study is to construct an approach using the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and BSC for evaluating a factory's performance in order for it to become a sustainable business. In this study, AHP is proposed to prioritise and determine weights for the perspectives and indicators included in the BSC for a financial software factory (FSF). The combination of these weights with different indicator measures produces a model that provides an effective assessment tool for FSF managers. The results of the study, which are shown both globally and disaggregated according to the different roles of FSF stakeholders, show that user satisfaction is the main pillar for making decisions. In addition, the result considering roles shows differences according to the relationship of each stakeholder with the software factory. The current study has been validated in a Spanish factory that develops software for several financial entities.
This paper presents a case study of how a Spanish financial software factory (FSF) has determined the weights of the indicators and objectives included in their strategy map with the aim of ensuring its business sustainability. A strategy map is a graphical representation of the cause-effect relationships between strategic objectives and indicators of a balanced scorecard (BSC). The detailed description of the strategy map development and deployment is not part of the aim of this work as it was described in a former paper. In this study, FAHP, a multicriteria decision-making (MCDM) method using the concepts of fuzzy set theory and hierarchical structure analysis, was used to calculate the weights. The analysis was carried out considering the points of view of different groups of stakeholders (shareholders, top management, middle managers, other employees, customers and some experts in the field of software factories) and the results are presented grouped by role to get a better understanding of the preferences of each kind of stakeholder. The conclusions of this study give a better insight of the corporative sustainability strategies of this kind of firms as well as the different vision of each stakeholder, what could be very valuable to the software factory managers for the decision-making and the strategic management of their organizations.
The prioritization of factors has been widely studied applying different methods from the domain of the multiple-criteria decision-making, such as for example the Analytic Hierarchy Process method (AHP) based on decision-makers’ pairwise comparisons. Most of these methods are subjected to a complex analysis. The Bradley-Terry model is a probability model for paired evaluations. Although this model is usually known for its application to calculating probabilities, it can be also extended for ranking factors based on pairwise comparison. This application is much less used; however, this work shows that it can provide advantages, such as greater simplicity than traditional multiple-criteria decision methods in some contexts. This work presents a method for ranking the perspectives and indicators of a balance scorecard when the opinion of several decision-makers needs to be combined. The data come from an elicitation process, accounting for the number of times a factor is preferred to others by the decision-makers in a pairwise comparisons. No preference scale is used; the process just indicates the winner of the comparison. Then, the priority weights are derived from the Bradley-Terry model. The method is applied in a Financial Software Factory for demonstration and validation. The results are compared against the application of the AHP method for the same data, concluding that despite the simplifications made with the new approach, the results are very similar. The study contributes to the multiple-criteria decision-making domain by building an integrated framework, which can be used as a tool for scorecard prioritization.
In recent years, there has been an on‐going demand for better services and functionality in software products; as a consequence many models, techniques, and tools have been developed such as CMMI‐DEV v1.2, TSP, or Scrum. However, software products still suffer from excessive costs, delays in delivery, and low quality. Furthermore, there is a lack of educational material providing high levels of interaction between students and the software industry to learn about how enterprises adopt these models, techniques, and tools into their daily work. This article describes a web‐based Tool (EduSysProVAL) to support a graduate course in collaboration with the local software industry. The main goal of this research is to demonstrate that a Software Engineering course may use the EduSysProVAL tool to improve students' practical and professional skills, thus increasing their participation and effort in improvement initiatives, in comparison to traditional educational approaches which are only based on theory classes. This research uses a four‐category questionnaire and follow‐up interviews to evaluate a satisfactory level of tool effectiveness with undergraduate students and summarizes the industry's positive perceptions about its contribution to the course. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Comput Appl Eng Educ 23:117–136, 2015; View this article online at http://wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/cae; DOI
Financial corporations and especially banking institutions have important needs concerning to the development of software around their business core. The software, that traditionally had been developed in house by the IT departments, is now usually outsourced to IT firms. These firms work under the software factories model. An important feature within this sector is that usually the financial groups keep the ownership of these firms because the strategic value of the software for the core business. These firms work almost exclusively for the owner financial group developing their software, but they have to demonstrate that they are so profitable and competitive like any other firm. The organizational structure of these firms has some differential features. Top level tasks (software design and project management) are usually performed by the IT firm but the development is usually subcontracted to other software companies. Although financial corporations have always paid a special interest to investing in management and organizational policies to improve their efficiency, there have being always an important lack regarding to the control and monitoring of the software projects. They do not have suitable tools for monitoring actual process effectiveness. Adapting scorecards to this environment could be a useful tool for monitoring and improvement the process. Scorecard could here be used both as a tool for internal effectiveness measurement as well as externally, presenting sustainabilityindicators for the shareholders, the financial institutions. This paper aims to identify and define a collection of Key Performance Indicators which permit effectiveness to be improved under this context, focusing in the specific supplychain model given by owner (financial group), software factory and software developers (subcontracted).
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