**Section 1**

**Performance and Quality as the Competitive Edge** 

**1** 

*Brazil* 

**Improving Organizational** 

*Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte* 

Felipe Furtado, Gibeon Aquino and Silvio Meira *Informatic Center of Federal University of Pernambuco Department of Informatics and Applied Mathematics of* 

*C.E.S.A.R, Recife Center of Advanced Studies and Systems* 

**Performance Through Reward Systems** 

In order to improve the results of projects, senior management of software development companies define programs to measure and improve productivity. This interest is related to the need to monitor whether the results of teams are aligned with organizational strategic goals and whether they are achieving the levels of productivity expected, such as, for example, the levels set for finance, customer satisfaction, product quality levels, and so forth

There are several strategies for improving productivity that are researched in the area of software development. The large majority are related to some previously studied factors

Quality of management: the low productivity of teams is directly related to poor project

Length and size of the project: increasing the length of the project or its size tend to

Use of tools: the impacts of the increase or decrease in productivity related to introducing

Instability of the requirements (Yu *et al.*, 1991) and of the software architecture (Cain &

However, besides the areas related to tools, methodologies, work environment, management and reuse, the area of personal incentives, raised in a study by Boehm (Boehm *et al.*, 1982), should be considered as one of the initiatives to be integrated into a program for

Aligned to Boehm's way of thinking, DeMarco (1999), in his research studies on the productivity of teams, reported that the main problems of our work are not only of a

and using tools in the software development process (Bruckhaus *et al.,* 1996);

Size of teams: small teams tend to be more productive (Behrens, 1983);

**1. Introduction** 

(Austin, 1996).

that affect the productivity of teams. For example:

decrease productivity (Maxwell *et al.*, 1996);

technological nature. Many are sociological in nature.

Reuse of software artifacts (Boehm, 1999);

management (Scacchi, 1984);

McCrindle, 2002).

improving productivity.
