The IT community has always struggled with questions concerning the value of an organization’s investment in software and hardware. It is the goal of value-based software engineering (VBSE) to develop models and measures of value which are of use for managers, developers and users as they make tradeoff decisions between, for example, quality and cost or functionality and schedule – such decisions must be economically feasible and comprehensible to the stakeholders with differing value perspectives. VBSE has its roots in work on software engineering economics, pioneered by Barry Boehm in the early 1980s. However, the emergence of a wider scope that defines VBSE is more recent. VBSE extends the merely technical ISO software engineering definition with elements not only from economics, but also from cognitive science, finance, management science, behavioral sciences, and decision sciences, giving rise to a truly multi-disciplinary framework. Biffl and his co-editors invited leading researchers and structured their contributions into three parts, following an introduction into the area by Boehm himself. They first detail the foundations of VBSE, followed by a presentation of state-of-the-art methods and techniques. The third part demonstrates the benefits of VBSE through concrete examples and case studies. This book deviates from the more anecdotal style of many management-oriented software engineering books and so appeals particularly to all readers who are interested in solid foundations for high-level aspects of software engineering decision making, i.e., to product or project managers driven by economics and to software engineering researchers and students.

Explaining how ubiquitous computing is rapidly changing our private and professional lives, Ethical IT Innovation: A Value-Based System Design Approach stands at the intersection of computer science, philosophy, and management and integrates theories and frameworks from all three domains.The book explores the latest thinking on computer ethics, inc

Max Scheler and Nicolai Hartmann developed ethics upon a phenomenological basis. This volume demonstrates that their contributions to a material ethics of value are complementary: by supplementing the work of one with that of the other, we obtain a comprehensive and defensible axiological and moral theory. By “phenomenology,” we refer to an intuitive procedure that attempts to describe thematically the insights into essences, or the meaning-elements of judgments, that underlie and make possible our conscious awareness of a world and the evaluative judgments we make of the objects and persons we encounter in the world.

This book shows how the grand aspiration of creating a Technology for Humanity can be practically achieved. Value-based Engineering helps embedding values into technology design and corporate business structures. Thriving on the knowledge created by over 100 experts in the IEEE 7000TM standardization project, Value-based Engineering gets the best out of 21st century technology while avoiding many tech-induced social dilemmas.

What would happen if everyone in your company followed a disciplined approach to cost reduction? Go ahead -- imagine it. What would it look like? How can it be done? The answer -- smart cost management. Effective cost management must start at the design stage. As much as 90-95% of a product's costs are added in the design process. That is why effective cost management programs focus on design and manufacturing. The primary cost management method to control cost during design is a combination of target costing and value engineering. Target Costing Objectives: Identify the cost at which your product must be manufactured at if it is to earn its profit margin at its expected target selling price. Break the target cost down to its component level and have your suppliers find ways to deliver the components they sell you at the set target prices while still making adequate returns. Value Engineering: The connection to function: An organized effort and team based approach to analyze the functions of goods and services that the design stage, and find ways to achieve those functions in a manner that allows the firm to meet its target costs. The result: Added value for your company (development costs on-line with added value for your company; development costs on-line with selling prices) and added value for your customer (higher quality products that meet, possibly even exceed, customer expectations.)

Information systems belong to the most complex artifacts built in today's society. Developing, maintaining, and using an information system raises a large number of difficult problems, ranging from purely technical to organizational and social. Information Systems Engineering: From Data Analysis to Process Networks presents the most current research on existing and emergent trends on conceptual modeling and information systems engineering, bridging the gap between research and practice by providing a much-needed reference point on the design of software systems that evolve seamlessly to adapt to rapidly changing business and organizational practices.

Design has intrinsic, economic value. To make this value tangible, design features of buildings need to be explored, measured, and taken into account when initiating projects and financing their construction. It is as calculable as the extrinsic value of a project. However, we need concepts, strategies, methods, techniques, and tools to do just that. The Value Based Design approach and Design-Added Value (D-AV) methodology in this book enables architects, engineers, contractors and owner-clients of buildings to benefit from extraordinary design and construction features. It explains the rationale and motivation for D-AV methodology, outlines and illustrates this methodology with examples, provides complete and detailed examples of how the key analysis techniques work through historical case studies, and describes specific methods used in application of the D-AV methodology, such as Bayesian statistics, cost benefit analysis, pairwise comparison techniques, cognitive walkthroughs, and optimization.