Table of Contents
Motivation of the Topic and Review of Relevant Literature
Software engineers and the public at large have always had an urge of making more software and money using the extra hours of work. The extra hours and the extra element of software that will be developed during overtime makes people have a thinking that overtime has advantages only. However, according to the article, it is important to note that, the extra work and extra time used by the software engineers has both the negative and the positive impact to the engineers and quality of work which was supposed to be done (Lai, 2011). The following are the effects of the overtime working to both the software developer and the quality of the software that will be produced
The software that will be produced during the overtime is always of a lower quality. The particular software will not attain the standards which are supposed to be. The engineers who are developing the software will do the job when they are very tired. A tired mind will never develop high-quality software (Chiang, 2012). The software developers are not very careful with all the details that are related to developing the high quality. The article explains that about 30% of the software that is being developed during extra time has lower qualities due to a lot of carelessness and the engineer’s failure to be keen on very important details that make the particular software to have the best quality. There is a linear relationship between overtime and error generating rates. This comes in line with the optimization objectivity whereby all the quality work will be done within the regular or normal only. The software development work that will be done after the regular time will not up to the standard.
Nevertheless, the overtime working has negative impacts on the life of the engineers. The engineers will have problems such as tiredness, lack of alertness and sense degradation. The addition makes the engineers have attrition on the side of their profession.
The solution to the problem of overworking and poor quality of work is the use of NSGAII algorithm solution. The solution involves representation of the problem on the people. Nevertheless, Crossover means the technique of working more time is passed to the sons and daughters from the parents. The experiment was done using the NSFAII algorithm showed that the more the person stays on the job without any remedy will develop low-quality software. Therefore, through using the formula we are able to estimate the overtime planning schedule taking into account positive and negative aspect of overtime.
The Novelty of the Paper and Comparison with the Previous Approach
The novelty of the approach within the paper is the fact that the HSGAII has the ability to incorporate both positive and the negative aspect of overtime during the process of software development. Using this formula, it is easy to understand and formulate the time which is needed to ensure that the activities being done at the overtime reduce the number of errors that might occur (Lai, 2011). Nevertheless, the formula is novel in such a way that it takes care of the negative impact of the developers. This happens in a way that it avoids incidences of lack of alertness and reduction of the sensibility of the developer. Therefore when the logarithm of HSGAII is put into use, the engineers and the software that they will develop will be taken care well. At the end, the engineers will be at a good mental and physical health, as well as the quality of the software, will also be to the expected standards.
The other approach dealing with the issues of overworking is in terms of the payment of the work done during extra time. This approach is referred to as the blended rate (Conway and Sturges, 2013). It is all about the way the employees are supposed to be compensated for doing work in the odd hours. The following is the equation which is used to calculate the amount of money need to paid to the employee who has gone for more time.
20 hours by $20+20 hours by $15+10 hours by $ 10=$ 800
Therefore $800/50 total hours =$ 160 per hour
Consequently, from the above approach of overtime, a person working for one hour in the United States of America will be paid 1600 for the extra hours. This approach does not look at the quality of work and the negative impact of extra work to the engineer
Therefore the Optimum objective approach has it’s novelty as it looks at the way the engineers will not have negative impact resulting from the overtime working while the blended rate approach only calculates the amount of money needed to compensate the software developers working in an extra time.
Future Work to be done
The future works should be done in the following sections. The first area is checking on the ways which can be used to check the quality of work during the progress. The researchers must come up with a method or technique which will be used to look into the details of software development in a keen way. This method will have a provision of guiding the engineers on the areas that they have gone wrong (Chiang, 2012). It is assumed that when working during overtime, the engineer will skip some important details. Therefore the software is supposed to be formed in order to check on the quality of the work in progress.
Nevertheless, a research should be done in order to avoid uncertainties about the duration of the project. It reaches a time when the project is stopped due to lack of enough tools or exit by an engineer. Therefore, it is important for the researchers to ensure that they formulate a formula which can be used to give the definite time when the project will be finished (Hart and Ma, 2013). The definite time is supposed to be given when all the expected barriers of the project that might derail it are put into consideration. This improves the planning of the project manager.
Criticism of the Paper
The paper has given a good explanation of the formula which is supposed to be used in order to ensure that the engineers are taken care and the quality of the software being developed is also checked. This is a good revelation done by the researcher within the paper. However, it is important to note that the paper did not explain the well the entire welfare of the software developers. It is evident that the software developers are supposed to be protected from mental and physical torture (Hart, 2010). Additionally, they are supposed to be protected from exploitation. Exploitation comes in different ways. However, in this context the exploitation is supposed to look at in terms of the monetary benefits that the employees working overtime are given. Most of the software developing firms give the engineers benefits of working overtime but it has not been standardized. Therefore it is important for the researcher to create the formula and algorithm which can be used to calculate the right amount f money which they are supposed to be given. The most interesting bit about the paper is the fact that the paper presented a formulation for overtime planning issue that used optimization and take into consideration the positive and the negative concerns of overtime. The simulation process is used in mimicking project the behavior of projects under different overtime. The paper compared the various approach with practice from industries and same model without any negative implication of overtime based on the product quality.
- Chiang, H. (2012). The Effect of Fringe Benefits on the Paid Overtime Hours in Japan. Journal Of Applied Business And Economics, 13(3), 124-134.
- Conway, N. and Sturges, J. (2013). Investigating Unpaid Overtime Working among the Part-time Workforce. British Journal of Management, 25(4), pp.755-771.
- http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1467-8551.12011/epdf
- Hart, R. (2010). Working time and employment. London: Routledge.
- https://books.google.co.ke/books?id=1o5aBwAAQBAJ&pg=PA2&dq=Previous+approach+of+calculating+overtime+and+working+time&hl=en&sa=X&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=Previous%20approach%20of%20calculating%20overtime%20and%20working%20time&f=false
- Hart, R. and Ma, Y. (2013). Overtime Working and Contract Efficiency. SSRN Electronic Journal.
- Lai, Y. (2011). The effects of overtime hour restrictions on hours and employment evidence from Taiwan ROC. Journal Of Statistics And Management Systems, 14(4), 815-841. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09720510.2011.10701587