Time is an essential measure of performance in software development because time delays tend to fall directly to the bottom line. To address this issue, this research seeks to distinguish time-based software development practices: those managerial actions that result in faster development speed and higher productivity. This study is based upon a survey of software management practices in Western Europe and builds upon an earlier study we carried out in the United States and Japan (Integrated Manufacturing Systems, vol. 7, no. 2, 1996). We measure the extent to which managers in the USA, Japan and Europe differ in their management of software projects and also determine the tools, technology and practices that separate fast and slow developers in Western Europe.

In recent years the information processing requirements of business organizations have expanded tremendously. With this expansion, the design of databases to efficiently manage and protect business information has become critical. We analyze the impacts of record segmentation (the assignment of data items to segments defining subfiles), an efficiency-oriented design technique, and of backup and recovery strategies , a data protection technique, on the overall process of database design. A combined record segmentation/backup and recovery procedure is presented and an application of the procedure is discussed. Results in which problem characteristics are varied along three dimensions: update frequencies, available types of access paths, and the predominant type of data retrieval that must be supported by the database, are presented.