Identifying high performance ERP projects

Abstract

Learning from high performance projects is crucial for software process improvement. Therefore Index TermsSoftware process improvement, benchmarking, best practice identification, software project management, multivariate productivity measurements, data envelopment analysis (DEA), software development, enterprise resource planning (ERP), software metrics, economies of scale, variable returns to scale.

Benchmarking library and application software with Data Envelopment Analysis

“…Significant research work has been devoted to the application of DEA to measure efficiency within an economic or business-related context and even to the software engineering industry (Asmild et al 2006;Stensrud and Myrtveit 2003). von Mayrhauser et al (2000) applied DEA to assess the efficiency of 46 software projects from the NASA-SEL database.…”

Cost estimation for cross-organizational ERP projects: research perspectives

“…Literature sources (Arnesen and Thompson 2005;Daneva and Wieringa 2006a;Daneva and Wieringa 2006b;Davenport 2000;Eschinger 2004;Holland et al 2005;O'Neil 2002;Rohde 2005;Stamelos et al 2003;Stensrud 2001;Stensrud and Myrtveit 2003;Vogelesang 2006) comparing ERP projects to other projects indicate that, unlike business information systems projects (e.g. data warehousing or workflow management systems) or custom software projects, ERP projects: (i) are broad in terms of functionality, covering thousands of business activities; (ii) treat the cross-organizational business processes in a value web as the fundamental building blocks of the system; (iiii) deliver a shared system which lets the business activities of one company become an integral part of the business of its partners; (vi) create system capabilities far beyond the sum of the ERP components' individual capabilities, which, allows the resulting system to qualitatively acquire new properties as result of its configuration; (v) may well include diverse configurations, each of which matches the needs of a unique stakeholder group, which, in turn, implies the presence of cost drivers unique to each configuration; (vi) deliver a system which is far from complete once the ERP project is over, because an ERP solution must mirror rapidly-changing business requirements, and so be adjusted regularly to accommodate current business needs; (Kelly and Holland 2002;Rolland and Prakash 2000)) are to be added in order to plan and manage the ERP project, and what the factors are that drive effort for these new activities.…”

“…Empirical studies also indicate that both ERP vendors and ERP clients are starting to team up to identify, model, and evaluate cost factors contributing to the ERP return-on-investment equation (Davenport 2000;SAP SI 2004;Stensrud and Myrtveit 2003). Awareness of the current need for ERP cost estimation models has also been raised by some professional bodies, like Management Accountants of Canada and US Controllers, who are now offering systematic help to ERP adopters in business case analysis of their ERP spending (Epstein and Rejic 2005).…”

Making resource decisions for software projects

“…Many of the relationships between variables have been prompted by empirical results described in a range of sources. These include [1,2,5,12,13,17,18,20,21,22,23,24,32].…”

“…This is an attractive measure, since it is determined directly from the requirements and is independent of language and project phase. The relationship between the 'effective effort' and the functionality delivered (the number of function points implemented) is based on published data and models in [5,17,18,20,22,24,31,32].…”