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Full-Text Articles in Engineering
Organizational Project Management (Opm): Exploring Its Need In Organizations, Yaser Alnasri, Jeffrey S. Busch
Organizational Project Management (Opm): Exploring Its Need In Organizations, Yaser Alnasri, Jeffrey S. Busch
Engineering and Technology Management Faculty Publications and Presentations
Organizational Project Management (OPM) is not a "thing" or a "procedure" rather, it can almost be described as a "state of being" or "harmony" in the alignment of what an organization does and how it gets there. OPM has the responsibility to enhance and improve how an organization achieves its strategic goals. It provides organizations with an intelligent approach to deal effectively with the various projects and programs required by the market, its organizational stakeholders, and regulatory agencies, all within the organization's limited resources. OPM has the responsibility to support the alignment between the organization's business strategy and its projects …
Fast And Frugal Heuristics For New Product Screening - Is Managerial Judgment "Good Enough?", Antonie J. Jetter, Fatima M. Albar
Fast And Frugal Heuristics For New Product Screening - Is Managerial Judgment "Good Enough?", Antonie J. Jetter, Fatima M. Albar
Engineering and Technology Management Faculty Publications and Presentations
Project screening in the fuzzy front-end of product development is dominantly based on managerial judgment, yet little is known about the quality of heuristic screening decisions. This research models three commonly discussed fast and frugal (F&F)heuristics for project screening (take-the-best, tallying and elimination-by-aspect) and explores their performance. An illustrative dataset of 52 new product development projects is used to compare the performance of F&F heuristics against that of regression models, which reflect compensatory judgment behaviour. The findings uncover a 'less is more' effect that justifies the use of simple heuristics in early stage product screening; two out of the three …
An Investigation On Fast And Frugal Model For New Project Screening, Antonie J. Jetter, Fatima M. Albar
An Investigation On Fast And Frugal Model For New Project Screening, Antonie J. Jetter, Fatima M. Albar
Engineering and Technology Management Faculty Publications and Presentations
Research in psychology is increasingly interested in decision-makers' use of heuristics or rules of thumb because they have accuracies close to more complex decision rules and seem particularly useful in difficult decision-making contexts when uncertainty is high and speed is of the essence. One particularly difficult decision setting is the fuzzy front-end of new product development because a large number of product ideas need to be screened to identify the few that should be developed further. This process is currently poorly supported through decision tools and mainly occurs on the basis of managerial “gut-feel”. This study explores managerial “gut-feel” by …
Theoretical Framework For Managing The Front End Of Innovation Under Uncertainty, Antonie J. Jetter, Richard Sperry
Theoretical Framework For Managing The Front End Of Innovation Under Uncertainty, Antonie J. Jetter, Richard Sperry
Engineering and Technology Management Faculty Publications and Presentations
A growing body of research suggests that the fuzzy front-end of product development should not be managed with a one-size-fits-all standard process. Instead, projects with different market and technical uncertainties should be managed with one of five different processes (linear, recursive, evolving, selectionism, trial-and-error). Based on a review of the literature, the paper develops a theoretical framework for front-end management which provides the foundation for ongoing empirical research.
A Decision Support Model For Project Manager Assignments, Peerasit Patanakul, Dragan Milošević, Timothy R. Anderson
A Decision Support Model For Project Manager Assignments, Peerasit Patanakul, Dragan Milošević, Timothy R. Anderson
Engineering and Technology Management Faculty Publications and Presentations
The question, "How to assign projects to project managers?" is considered to be one of the most important questions in project management. Nevertheless, methods to answer this question have not yet been sufficiently addressed in the literature. In practice, even though the question is rather common, practitioners still seek an effective project assignment methodology - especially, for the assignments of project managers of multiple concurrent projects, such as a project manager of new product development projects in typical high-technology industries. To respond to this question, we performed an inductive study to develop a theoretical framework for project assignments, including some …
Fuzzy Cognitive Maps For Engineering And Technology Management: What Works In Practice?, Antonie J. Jetter
Fuzzy Cognitive Maps For Engineering And Technology Management: What Works In Practice?, Antonie J. Jetter
Engineering and Technology Management Faculty Publications and Presentations
Due to a lack of available data, many early planning decisions in engineering and technology management have to be based on experts' opinions and their qualitative statements about evolving technologies, markets and general business environments. Several authors have suggested the use of fuzzy cognitive maps (FCMs) to analytically support these decisions with simulation models that can cope with qualitative information. However, only little practice experience is documented. Based on multiple case studies and an extensive literature review, the paper reviews the state-of-the-art of FCM-practice and introduces a six-step guideline for practitioners and researchers who wish to apply FCMs to real-world …
Do Maps Guide The Way To Npd Success? Theoretical And Practical Aspects Of Knowledge Mapping In Product Development, Antonie J, Jetter
Do Maps Guide The Way To Npd Success? Theoretical And Practical Aspects Of Knowledge Mapping In Product Development, Antonie J, Jetter
Engineering and Technology Management Faculty Publications and Presentations
New product development success largely depends on the ability to combine newly acquired information on customer demands and technological options with knowledge that exists within the company. Project organization and high employee turnover, however, make it difficult to be informed about what knowledge is available within the company and to access it successfully. Knowledge maps, a popular concept in present knowledge management, offer a possible solution by ?guiding the way to knowledge?. Their purpose, structure and content varies greatly, as does their ability to capture different aspects of knowledge. This paper investigates the theoretical basis of different types of knowledge …
Educating The Guess: Strategies, Concepts And Tools For The Fuzzy Front End Of Product Development, Antonie J. Jetter
Educating The Guess: Strategies, Concepts And Tools For The Fuzzy Front End Of Product Development, Antonie J. Jetter
Engineering and Technology Management Faculty Publications and Presentations
Many companies lack efficient management of the early phases of new product development (NPD) - the socalled fuzzy front end (FFE). Rather than on structured methods, decision makers rely on ?gut ?feel? or ?guessing?. In an attempt to ?educate the guess? this paper discusses the activities and challenges of the FFE, as well as strategies to manage them successfully. It then briefly presents traditional and recent approaches to front-end management support. Based on the identified strengths and weaknesses of existing front-end solutions, the framework of a new management support system for the FFE is presented. Conceptually, the system is based …
Using Data Envelopment Analysis For Evaluating Alternative Software Development Process Configurations, Timothy R. Anderson, Peter K. Ghavami
Using Data Envelopment Analysis For Evaluating Alternative Software Development Process Configurations, Timothy R. Anderson, Peter K. Ghavami
Engineering and Technology Management Faculty Publications and Presentations
Summary form only given as follows. The goal of achieving better software depends on improvements in software development processes. This paper provides a nonparametric, quantitative methodology for evaluating alternative software development process configurations as a tool for process improvement. The methodology uses data envelopment analysis (DEA) for comparing the impact of varying degrees of software inspection on project schedule, cost and quality. Since every phase of the development process can be inspected at varying levels, a large number of process combinations become possible. Thus a manager's job to compare and select an efficient process configuration can become tedious. This is …