Software maintenance improvement in small software companies: Reflections on experiences

Software maintenance is one of the main processes in software companies. It is regarded as more complex and costly compared to software development, and therefore should be carefully planned and managed. Micro software companies are companies with up to 10 employees, and they represent a significant driver of economic development in many countries around the world. However, micro companies have specific internal organizations and a business model, but also have significant constraints on human and financial resources. After outlining the basic concepts of software maintenance and the characteristics of small and micro software companies, the paper presents the author’s experience in software maintenance management in a local micro software company in Serbia. Maintenance management was implemented through a project aimed at improving maintenance processes in the company. The main objective was the improvement of maintenance request processing, which resulted in the implementation of a technical solution related to the timeline of maintenance requests. Since the process improvement project fosters organizational learning and knowledge management activities, a knowledge identification and systematization project was implemented as a subproject. Presented experience gained through fieldwork in the company contributed to the overall knowledge base about software engineering practice in micro software companies, which can be beneficial to both researchers from academia and practitioners from industry.

“…All employees were included in the SPI project, but in a way that does not seriously change their typical working days. SPI project contains the following phases (Stojanov, 2021):…”

Section: Process Improvementmentioning

confidence: 99%

Software Maintenance Management in Micro Software Companies

Stojanov¹

2022

“…However, research on their maintenance practice is very limited according to the literature review conducted by the author. The research made by the author of this paper on maintenance process improvement (Stojanov, 2021) and knowledge management in software maintenance practice (Stojanov, 2019) has been recently published as a result of many years of research work based on the practice in a local micro software company. Based on the above discussion, the objective of this paper is to present the reflections on the author's experience with software maintenance management practice in a local micro software company.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Analysis of Determinants of Corporate Cash Holding of Listed Manufacturing Companies on the Macedonian Stock Exchange

Naumoski¹

2022

In this study, we identify the determinants of cash holding in Macedonian manufacturing companies. The analysis was conducted using accounting data from publicly available financial statements of the sample of Macedonian industrial companies for the 2005 to 2019 period. The research was conducted through the prism of the postulates of the three main theories in corporate finance, i.e., the trade-off theory, pecking order theory,and thefree cash flow theory. To that end, we applied a panel regression analysis, while from the obtained results we assess which theoretical model best explains the cash management in Macedonian companies. We found that the cash to total assets ratio averaged 3.1%. The cash holding decreases with the decrease of the net working capital, financial leverage,cash flow variability, andcash conversion cycle. Cash holding increases with the increase of the company size, cash flow, debt maturity, and capital investments. We concluded that most of the results are in line with the pecking order theory, which indicates that Macedonian companies do not have predefined cash balances, and the cash holdings are abuffer between retained earnings and investments. The level of cash holding is not planned and is not optimized, but is determined during the work processes and depends on other business decisions.

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Relationship Between Expenditure and Labor Productivity

Yılmaz¹

2022

Theoretically, the relationship between health expenditures and labour productivity is ambiguous. On the one hand, health expenditures can enhance labour productivity by improving health of workers. Poor health impairs both the working hours and productivities of workers. When workers are healthy, they become physically and mentally more energetic and they have higher incentive to develop new skills and knowledge. On the other hand, increase in health expenditures may deteriorates labour productivity by crowding out physical capital investment. Causality between health expenditures and labour productivity is also ambiguous. This paper investigates the long-run relationship between health expenditures and labor productivity by utilizing a panel data covering the period between 2000 and 2015 and 35 OECD countries. Results of the study displays that there is a positive and statistically significant long-run association between health expenditures and labor productivity. Findings indicate that an increase in per capita health expenditure leads to a rise in labor productivity in terms of GDP per person employed. Results of the study also suggest that there is a mutual (bi-directional) causality relationship between health expenditures and labor productivity indicators.