Due to growing concern about the competitiveness of industry in the international marketplace and the efficiency ofgovernment enterprises, widespread initiatives are currently underway to enhance thecompetitive posture offirms and to streamline government operations. Nearly all enterprises are engaged in assessing ways in which their productivity, product quality and operations can be improved. These efforts canbe described as Business Process Engineering (BPE). BPE had its roots in industry under differing titIes: Process Improvement, Process Simplification, Process Innovation, Reengineering, etc. It has matured to be an important ingredient of successful enterprises in the private and public sectors. After extensive exploitation by industrial and governmental practitioners and consultants, it is attracting increasing attention from academics in the fields of engineering and business. However, even with all of this attention in the popular literature, serious scholarly literature on BPE is in short supply. TItis is somewhat surprising, especially since so many large international organizations have attempted BPE projectswith varied success.

This volume presents a selection of the presentations from the first annual conference on Analytical Methods in Software Engineering Economics held at The MITRE Corporation in McLean, Virginia. The papers are representative of the issues that are of interest to researchers in the economics of information systems and software engineering economics. The 1990s are presenting software economists with a particularly difficult set of challenges. Because of budget considerations, the number of large new software development efforts is declining. The primary focus has shifted to issues relating to upgrading and migrating existing systems. In this environment, productivity enhancing methodologies and tools are of primary interest. The MITRE Software Engineering Analysis Conference was designed to address some of th,~ new and difficult challenges that face our profession. The primary objective of the conference was to address new theoretical and applications directions in Software Engineering Economics, a relatively new discipline that deals with the management and control of all segments of the software life-cycle. The discipline has received much visibility in the last twenty-five years because of the size and cost considerations of many software development and maintenance efforts, particularly in the Federal Government. We thank everyone who helped make this conference a success, especially those who graciously allowed us to include their work in this volume.

Software Engineering Economics is a relatively new discipline that deals with all segments of the software life cycle. The discipline has received much visibility in recent years because of the size and cost considerations of many software development and maintenance efforts. This book places additional emphasis on the Federal Governments Information Resource Management initiative and deals with related issues such as Business Re-engineering, Functional Economic Analysis, Organizational Process Modelling and the Economics of Reuse.

Cost analysis and estimating is a vital part of the running of all organizations, both commercial and government. This volume comprises the proceedings of the 1992 conference of the Society for Cost Estimating and Analysis. Individual chapters are written by experts in their respective fields. Consequently, the volume as a whole provides an invaluable and up-to-date survey of the field.

International Applications of Productivity and Efficiency Analysis features a complete range of techniques utilized in frontier analysis, including extensions of existing techniques and the development of new techniques. Another feature is that most of the contributions use panel data in a variety of approaches. Finally, the range of empirical applications is at least as great as the range of techniques, and many of the applications are of considerable policy relevance.

The purpose of Business Process Engineering: Advancing the State of the Art is to outline the structure of Business Process Engineering (BPE), its practices, methods, and theory for implementing successful organization restructuring. BPE is the design and implementation of efficient and effective business processes, and the corresponding alignment of enabling information technologies and systems. The editors have assembled the best research on BPE and recreated a structured volume that provides academic researchers and practitioners with a theoretical and practical framework for implementing specific BPE solutions for business and government. Hence, the book covers theoretical efforts towards the creation of new methods in BPE and practical issues that relate to its actual implementation in the real world of business and government. Authors from industry, government, and academia have contributed individual chapters. The emphasis is on methodology that can be replicated. Industry and governmental contributors have provided a synthesis of BPE experiences or individual case studies. In both cases, the work is intended to lead to lessons learned that may be successfully employed by others. The academically oriented chapters relate BPE methodologies to other forms of organizational change, building on previous research in related areas. The chapters are grouped as follows: Structures for BPE, Model Development, Information Technology for BPE, Tools for BPE, and Case Studies of BPE. The goal of this volume is to present works that clarify the definition of the field and establish factors that lead to success in implementation. The editors' premise is that the objective of BPE is to bringabout organizational improvement by the application of scientific principles and the use of enabling information technologies. This new methodology, founded and nurtured in practice, will evolve into a mature academic field that will involve many diverse academic disciplines. This volume is intended to contribute to that development.

International Applications of Productivity and Efficiency Analysis features a complete range of techniques utilized in frontier analysis, including extensions of existing techniques and the development of new techniques. Another feature is that most of the contributions use panel data in a variety of approaches. Finally, the range of empirical applications is at least as great as the range of techniques, and many of the applications are of considerable policy relevance.

The airframe industry is usually recognized as being different from most manufacturing industries. These differences, which are characterized by the number of units produced and the frequency of design changes, have been evident for many years. This uniqueness and the corresponding implications for cost estimation became particularly evident during World War II. The aircraft industry generally has been considered unique in that it differs from other manufacturing in the quantity of units manufactured and with the frequency with which changes are made during the course of manufacturing operations. In mass-production industries, manufacturing thousands or hundreds of thousands of identical units, methods and cost of production tend to remain fairly constant after production has been stabilized, whereas in the aircraft industry, method improvements are constantly being made and cost is a variable depending on the number of airplanes being manufactured (Berghell, 1944). These differences, coupled with political considerations, place unusual demands on cost modelers. This has been particularly true in recent years where large cost overruns have generated Congressional demands for better cost estimates. Traditionally, cost estimators in the airframe industry have used one or more of the following estimating techniques: 1. industrial engineering time standards, 2. parametric cost estimating models, 3. learning curves. All of the methods have been used with mixed results in specific situations. The general emphasis of all three approaches is cost estimation for planning purposes prior to beginning production, although some of the techniques may be used during the production phase of a program.