Luisanna Cocco

Simulating Kanban and Scrum vs. Waterfall with System Dynamics

Nowadays, Scrum is the most used Agile Methodology, while the Lean-Kanban approach is perhaps the fastest growing AM. On the other hand, traditional, waterfall-like approaches are still very used in real-life software projects, due to the ease of up-front planning and budgeting, that however are seldom matched upon project completion. In our opinion, more effort is needed to study and model the inner structure and behavior of these approaches, highlighting positive and negative feedback loops that are strategic to understand their features, and to decide on their adoption. In this paper we analyze the dynamic behavior of the adoption of Kanban and Scrum, versus a traditional software development process such as the Waterfall approach. We use a system dynamics model, based on the relationships between system variables, to assess the relative benefits of the studied approaches. The model is simulated using a commercial tool. The proposed model visualizes the relationships among these software development processes, and can be used to study their relative advantages and disadvantages.

Modeling and Simulation of the Economics of Mining in the Bitcoin Market

In January 3, 2009, Satoshi Nakamoto gave rise to the “Bitcoin Blockchain”, creating the first block of the chain hashing on his computer’s central processing unit (CPU). Since then, the hash calculations to mine Bitcoin have been getting more and more complex, and consequently the mining hardware evolved to adapt to this increasing difficulty. Three generations of mining hardware have followed the CPU’s generation. They are GPU’s, FPGA’s and ASIC’s generations. This work presents an agent-based artificial market model of the Bitcoin mining process and of the Bitcoin transactions. The goal of this work is to model the economy of the mining process, starting from GPU’s generation, the first with economic significance. The model reproduces some “stylized facts” found in real-time price series and some core aspects of the mining business. In particular, the computational experiments performed can reproduce the unit root property, the fat tail phenomenon and the volatility clustering of Bitcoin price series. In addition, under proper assumptions, they can reproduce the generation of Bitcoins, the hashing capability, the power consumption, and the mining hardware and electrical energy expenditures of the Bitcoin network.

Banking on Blockchain: Costs Savings Thanks to the Blockchain Technology

This paper looks at the challenges and opportunities of implementing blockchain technology across banking, providing food for thought about the potentialities of this disruptive technology. The blockchain technology can optimize the global financial infrastructure, achieving sustainable development, using more efficient systems than at present. In fact, many banks are currently focusing on blockchain technology to promote economic growth and accelerate the development of green technologies. In order to understand the potential of blockchain technology to support the financial system, we studied the actual performance of the Bitcoin system, also highlighting its major limitations, such as the significant energy consumption due to the high computing power required, and the high cost of hardware. We estimated the electrical power and the hash rate of the Bitcoin network, over time, and, in order to evaluate the efficiency of the Bitcoin system in its actual operation, we defined three quantities: “economic efficiency”, “operational efficiency”, and “efficient service”. The obtained results show that by overcoming the disadvantages of the Bitcoin system, and therefore of blockchain technology, we could be able to handle financial processes in a more efficient way than under the current system.

Study of the Competition between Proprietary Software Firms and Free/Libre Open Source Software Firms Using a Simulation Model

In recent years, a very important structural change in the software industry took place, with an increasing number of firms that got involved in Free/Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS) development communities. FLOSS communities and products have been studied as complementary to proprietary software companies and products. In this paper we propone a business model for the software market, and in particular we analyze the competition between proprietary software firms and FLOSS firms. Our software market is a system where each agent is independent of each other in the choice about buying or selling software products or services. The proposed work aims to analyze the influence of FLOSS firms producing both software and services in vertical software markets, nowadays mostly dominated by large proprietary firms. The findings show that FLOSS firms are able to compete with proprietary firms, though in the end a monopoly or oligopoly of the latters emerges. The ousted FLOSS firms, however, survive longer than proprietary ones, when these are not able to compete in the market.

Simulation of the Best Ranking Algorithms for an App Store

The world of mobile applications is relatively young. However, it has already grown and will continue to expand in the future. Consequently, an increasing number of mobile application stores provide new ways for the users of downloading mobile applications and for the developers of submitting new applications. Millions of consumers look for mobile applications to download - i.e. games, maps, movie, e-mails and so on. This extraordinary new world represents an exceptional challenge for application developers who want to earn and obtain new business opportunities. Our research work focused on studying, analyzing and modeling the best strategies that should be adopted in a mobile application store in order to maximize efficiency and profit. We propose a model that simulates a complex system of mobile applications, developers, and users, all together interacting in an application mobile store. Here the developers build and upload mobile applications to the mobile applications store and the users browse the store and download only the mobile applications that arouse their attention.

Insularity and economies of density: analyzing the efficiency of a logistic network using an econometric simulation-based approach

ABSTRACT This paper explores the challenges posed by insularity to economic development and overall welfare from a novel viewpoint. Using a multidisciplinary approach, we investigated the additional burden that this permanent geographical condition poses to retailers whose profit-maximizing strategy relies upon the exploitation of the economies of density. The analysis results show that a retailer finds it convenient to develop its network on the mainland, exploiting the proximity of his stores and distribution centres. Further, it shows that insularity, an unlikely similar condition such as peripherality and remoteness, prevents retailers from expanding their network on an island, thus lowering competition and affecting consumers’ welfare.

Simulation of the competition among traditional and on-demand software vendors

In this work, we propose a simulation model to study the software market, and in particular the competition among on-premise and on-demand vendors of customer relationship management software. In this market two kinds of vendors, on-premise and on-demand vendors, and corporate customers interact. Vendors have an initial capital and a specific number of developers. They invest a fraction of their capital in their product quality and try to sell their products making a profit. Corporate customers buy software products for their employees, trying to minimize their cost and maximize their utility. The proposed model is able to reproduce the real trends of the market as regards both the price of software and the market shares of the vendors, despite there is relatively little empirical evidence available about the various mechanisms at play, and few experimental data. Our model could be used as a tool to forecast future market trends, or to plan business policies of investment and pricing. Any firm could calibrate this model depending on its past business trends in order to obtain simple guidelines to follow in the planning of business winning strategies.

Simulation of the on Demand Software Model, Including Vendors Offering Source Code Availability

Abstract In recent years, the power balance between software firms and enterprise customers has been heavily changing. The contractual power of customers is increasing and the firms must take this fact into account. Stated the common need to save money, the opportunities to adopt new software solutions with tight budgets, or with substantial savings, are limited. The better way to obtain operational savings seems to be shifting to the use of open source software, obtaining in this way all the benefits of this software typology: lower costs, greater adherence to open standards, a broader vendor choice and service suppliers, no vendor lock-in and flexible, incremental architectures. In this work, a business model is proposed to analyse the competition among on-demand customer relationship management (CRM) firms, in particular among firms offering CRM products with or without source code availability. The model can also be customized to study other kinds of markets, and other assumptions can be made for studying their implications to the software business.

A case study of the use of Open Source CMS in Public Administrations

The use of Open Source Content Management System (CMS) on the Web is increasing thanks to the flexibility provided by these systems and the simplification of the management operations. The use of CMS is simple for non programming experts. Many Public Administrations have adopted Open Source CMS for their websites, greatly reducing operating costs and ensuring scalability, advanced performance and privacy to the users. A special opportunity for a case study are the Italian municipalities. In fact the Italian Government, since January 2011, has required all municipalities to develop a website publishing all the public acts and everything related to the citizen-municipality communication (information regarding office hours, salaries of public employees, news and so on). Our study aims to quantify through empirical studies, the use of Open Source CMS in Italian municipalities websites in response to government regulations. Our results show that the number of Italian Public Administrations that use Open Source CMS is increasing, and our case study highlights how the adoption of Open Source CMS has increased about 5% in a year, leading to the 21.2% the percentage of Open Source CMS, with respect to the 15.8% registered in 2011.