T his paper presents a project management policy in which the appearance of software faults during system construction is used to determine the timing of system integration activities (e.g., team meetings, analyzing modules for interface inconsistencies, system fault correction, and so on). System integration is performed only if a threshold fault count has been exceeded; otherwise, module development is allowed to continue. We derive an expression for calculating fault thresholds and analyze the policy to reveal the presence of three operating regions: (1) a region in which development should continue with no system integration, (2) a region in which system integration occurs if a threshold fault count has been exceeded, and (3) a region in which system integration should always take place. Analytical and numerical results demonstrate how the fault thresholds change with system complexity, team skill, development environment, and project schedule. We also show how learning that occurs during each round of system integration leads to less frequent integration in the future, and lower total construction effort. Simulation experiments reveal that the fault threshold policy can be applied even if several homogeneity assumptions in the model are relaxed, allowing for differences in the propensity among modules to accumulate faults and the effort needed to correct these faults. Finally, the fault threshold policy outperforms a fixed-release policy in which system integration occurs whenever a fixed number of modules has been released.
The new product development literature offers divergent views of the relationship between innovation speed and project success. Innovation speed, defined as the period of time in which an idea moves from conception to introduction into the marketplace, has an ambiguous relationship with development cost and product quality. While several studies argue for the trade-offs between innovation speed, development cost, and product quality in which accelerating innovation speed may result in inflating costs and sacrificing quality, some research identifies a synergy under which rapid innovation speed may lead to decreasing costs and improving quality. This study provides a framework for addressing these conflicting results. An empirical study of 168 projects of high-tech manufacturers in Taiwan is analysed by structural equation modelling. Our findings show that the impact of innovation speed on project success is mediated by development cost and product quality. In addition, product innovativeness is found to moderate the impacts of innovation speed on development cost and product quality. Implications of the results for theory and managerial practice are offered.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.