The SEI’s Capability Maturity Model for Software has popularized the notion of measuring the software process maturity of organizations. ISO’s SPICE project is currently creating a set of international standards for software process management that harmonize existing approaches. One of the objectives is to create a way of measuring process capability, while not using a specific approach such as...

This chapter examines the development of e-Government in selected Egyptian local governments. A content analysis of 25 local government website portals was conducted examining categories of eManagement, e-Services, e-Democracy, and e-Decision making. The study first sets out to examine the overall level of maturity of local government websites in these four areas in Egypt. Second, this study ex...

A key success factor for a successful company in a dynamic environment is effective and efficient information technology (IT) supporting business strategies and processes. Organizations that successfully align their business strategy and their IT strategy outperform their non-aligned peers (Chan et al., 1997). In recent surveys IT executives consistently name IT to Business alignment their top-...

Age and size at maturity can have significant fitness consequences. Selection often favors early-maturing individuals because of their higher survival to maturity and greater relative contribution to population growth rate, but it may also favor delayed maturation if fitness increases with age or size at maturity. Males of several poeciliid fishes exhibit variation in age and size at maturity p...

This paper has examined the Samuelson’s hypothesis which states that the price volatility increases as the contract nears its maturity. It has also examined the BCSS hypothesis which provides that negative covariance between the spot price and net cost of carry explains the maturity effect. The study has examined these hypotheses on the data for wheat and pepper futures contract traded at NCDEX...

Catch quotas for walleye pollock Gadus chalcogrammus, the dominant species in the groundfish fishery off Alaska, are set by applying harvest control rules to annual estimates of spawning stock biomass (SSB) from age-structured stock assessments. Adult walleye pollock abundance and maturity status have been monitored in early spring in Shelikof Strait in the Gulf of Alaska for almost three decad...

Harvest maturity is closely related to peach fruit quality and has a very important effect on the fresh fruit market. Unfortunately, at present, it is difficult to determine the maturity level of peach fruits by artificial methods. The objectives of this study were to develop quadratic polynomial regression models using near-infrared spectroscopy that could determine the peel color difference, ...

AIM This study, part of the Methods of Assessing Response to Quality Improvement Strategies (MARQuIS) research project focusing on cross-border patients in Europe, investigated quality policies and improvement in healthcare systems across the European Union (EU). The aim was to develop a classification scheme for the level of quality improvement (maturity) in EU hospitals, in order to evaluate ...

The procurement business function is increasingly recognized as strategic and subject of performance management. In this paper we present a research model to decompose the procurement function by six maturity dimensions (strategy, e-technology, process, information, monitoring and organization). The model is based on the proposition that an organizations’ procurement performance is positively r...