Luis Eduardo Mendoza

Critical success factors for a customer relationship management strategy

Most organizations have perceived the customer relationship management (CRM) concept as a technological solution for problems in individual areas, accompanied by a great deal of uncoordinated initiatives. Nevertheless, CRM must be conceived as a strategy, due to its human, technological, and processes implications, at the time an organization decides to implement it. On this basis, the main goal stated in this research is to propose, justify, and validate a model based on critical success factors (CSFs) that will constitute a guide for companies in the implementation and diagnosis of a CRM strategy. The model is conformed by a set of 13 CSFs with their 55 corresponding metrics, which will serve as a guide for organizations wishing to apply this type of strategy. These factors cover the three key aspects of every CRM strategy (human factor, processes, and technology); giving a global focus and propitiating success in the implementation of a CRM strategy. These CSFs - and their metrics - were evaluated by a group of internationally experts allowing determining guidelines for a CRM implementation as well as the probable causes of the deficiencies in past projects.

Critical Success Factors for Managing Systems Integration

Abstract System integration is a complex technological task, and an infrastructure decision that seems right today might well be obsolete tomorrow. This article proposes a framework of critical success factors (CSFs) that can be used to manage IS integration projects, according to a firms current stage of IT integration maturity and other IS infrastructure characteristics. To demonstrate the potential utility of this CSF framework, the authors analyze case studies at two firms using 86 metrics for 20 CSFs developed by the authors.

Quality in Development Process for Software Factories According to ISO 15504

Currently the concept of Software Factories (SF), where reuse plays a leading role, is being adopted. Due to the different approaches in this area, and although SF concept is not new in Software Engineering, it is still not mature enough to clearly identify the treatment of certain variables within the process. One of these variables is Quality. Therefore, this paper presents a historical review of the SF concept, proposes an ontology based on the most recent definitions and establishes a relationship between these concepts and the ISO 15504 standard, with the purpose of specifying the systemic quality in software developer companies that decide to implement an SF strategy.

Feature analysis for architectural evaluation methods

Given the complexity of todays software systems, Software Architecture is a topic that has recently increased in significance. It is consider as a key element in the design and development of systems and has the ability to promote/punish some quality characteristics. Quality is related mainly to the non-functional requirements expected of the system. Using appropriate methods for Architectural Evaluation can help to reduce the risk of low quality Architecture. The objective of this research is to conduct a Features Analysis for three Architectural Evaluation Methods applied to a single case. This resulted in two significant contributions; the aspects which must be present in an architectural evaluation method which is translated in a set of 49 metrics, grouped into features and sub-features to enable the evaluation of a particular method. Different methods can be compared on the basis of these features; however, the choice of method will depend largely on the requirements of the evaluating team. The second contribution pinpoints the strengths of the methods evaluated. The methods studied were: Design and Use of Software Architectures, Architecture Tradeoff Analysis Method, and Architectural Evaluation Method. The evaluation method employed for this research was Features Analysis Case Study.

Evaluation of environments for portals development: A case study

Abstract With the growing application of the Internet, business portal software is becoming increasingly complex given the wide variety of technologies it must integrate. It is therefore most important to have development environments that enable this type of software to be built efficiently. This justifies the need to evaluate the quality of business portal development environments. The objective of this article is to propose the definition of a quality model for business portal development environments, based on ISO/IEC 9126, with the appropriate metrics for estimating quality. the estimation model was evaluated through a case study using a commercial business portal development environment. the rational unified process (RUP) methodology was chosen to build a business portal prototype.

Conceptual framework for business processes compositional verification

Context: To guarantee the success of Business Process Modelling (BPM) it is necessary to check whether the activities and tasks described by Business Processes (BPs) are sound and well coordinated. Objective: This article describes and validates a Formal Compositional Verification Approach (FCVA) that uses a Model-Checking (MC) technique to specify and verify BPs. Method: This is performed using the Communicating Sequential Processes +Time (CSP+T) process calculus, which adds new constructions to timed Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN) modelling entities for non- functional requirement specification. Results: Using our proposal we are able to specify the BP Task Model (BPTM) associated with BPs by formalising the timed BPMN notational elements. The proposal also allows us to apply MC to BPTM verification. A real-life example of verifying a BPTM in the field of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is discussed as a practical application of FCVA. Conclusion: This approach facilitates the verification of complex BPs from independently verified local processes, and establishes a feasible way to use process calculi to verify BPs using state-of-the-art MC tools.

Compositional Model-Checking Verification of Critical Systems

Ensuring the correctness of Critical Systems (CS) becomes more complex if we consider that their behaviour is the result of the concurrent execution of many components. Furthermore, any automaton–based representation of concurrent components yields an explosion in the number of states, thus limiting the use of Model–Checking (MC) verification techniques in practice. This article presents a compositional verification approach, which is formally supported by state–of–the–art MC tools. To facilitate and guarantee the verification of large CS, the proposed approach integrates MEDISTAM–RT (Spanish acronym of Method for System Design based on Analytic Transformation of Real–Time Models), CCTL temporal logic as the property specification formal language, and the formal language CSP+T, used to formally describe a model of the system to be verified. To show a practical use of the proposed approach, a critical part of a realistic industry project related to mobile phone communications is discussed.

Quality Measurement Model for Analysis and Design Tools Based on FLOSS

The selection of Free/Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS) tools for Analysis and Design (A&D) is a hard task due to their complexity, their wide variety within the market, and their functionality level. This article aims at introducing a group of quality features to evaluate FLOSS tools for A&D. Such features are presented based on the perspective of the Software Quality Systemic Model (MOSCA), inspired by ISO/IEC 9126 [9], Dromeys quality model [5] and the Goal-Question-Metrics (GQM) Paradigm. This model includes attributes such as functionality, usability and maintainability, and establishes 52 new metrics for a total of 102 metrics that allow evaluating FLOSS tools for A&D within a specific context. Lastly, validation of this proposal is verified through its application on eight FLOSS-based A&D tools.

Ontology Proposal for Quality Oriented Reuse

Quality and productivity improvement are some advantages of reuse in the software development process. Although the reuse concept is not new, there is not a rigorous representation of related reuse concepts and quality. In this paper, we present a historical review of the reuse concepts, and ontology based on reuse definitions and its relation with quality assurance processes. This ontology is part of a research in progress that promotes reuse from the beginning of the software development process in a specific domain, focusing in quality criteria

Automating the Transformation from BPMN Models to CSP+T Specifications

The complexity of modern Business Process Modelling (BPM) together with the absence of the appropriate validation tools is the main reason for the costly and non- evolutionary characteristics of these models. Temporal constructs of Extended Business Process Model and Notation (EBPMN) semantics are disambiguated here by using Communicating Sequential Processes+Time (CSP+T) process calculus, which adds new constructions to timed BPMN modelling entities for non-functional requirements specification. Our objective is to facilitate the description of a business process model as a collection of verified software components, thereby advancing to their complete verification with state-of-the-art model checking tools. One real-life example, Customer Relationship Management (CRM) modelled as a correct business task model is discussed to demonstrate the applicability of the verification approach.