A model-based framework to overlap product development activities
Management Science - Special issue on frontier research in manufacturing and logistics
A predictive model of sequential iteration in engineering design
Management Science
IEEE Transactions on Computers
Communication and Uncertainty in Concurrent Engineering
Management Science
The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Softw
The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Softw
Time-Cost Trade-Offs in Overlapped Product Development
Operations Research
Staffing Software Maintenance and Support Projects
HICSS '05 Proceedings of the Proceedings of the 38th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences - Volume 09
The Golden Age of Software Architecture
IEEE Software
Optimal Software Development: A Control Theoretic Approach
Information Systems Research
Concurrent Crashing and Overlapping in Product Development
Operations Research
A Comparison of Pair Versus Solo Programming Under Different Objectives: An Analytical Approach
Information Systems Research
OM Practice---Balancing Risk and Efficiency at a Major Commercial Bank
Manufacturing & Service Operations Management
Hi-index | 0.00 |
Every year, companies that produce commercial tax preparation software struggle with thousands of state and federal changes to tax laws and forms. Three competitors dominate the market with its short selling season, and release delays slash profits. Tax authorities issue updates August--December, and all changes must be processed and incorporated before year end. Systematic resource allocation and process management are crucial yet problematic due to the volume and complexity of changes, brief production time frame, and feedback loops for bug resolution. A leading tax software provider asked us to propose systematic approaches for managing process flow and staffing development stages with the goal of releasing the new version on time at minimum cost. To that end, we developed deterministic models that partitioned tax forms into development groups and determined staffing levels for each group. Partitioning forms into groups simplified workflow management and staffing decisions. To provide a range of resource configurations, we used two modeling approaches. Numerical experiments showed that our models capture the salient features of the process and that our heuristics perform well. Implementing our models reduced company overtime hours by 31% and total workforce cost by 13%.