Nike Case Study on their Supply Chain Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Nike Case Study on their Supply Chain - Essay Example People from various places across the globe have different tastes for different products hence the need to satisfy these as a way of gaining competitive advantage globally. The other competitive priority for Nike is the need to be cognisant of the changes in consumer behaviour. Consumer wants and needs are different from various parts of the globe hence the need to make an effort to identify and satisfy these so as to be able to remain viable. The cost advantage is another competitive priority for Nike. This is seen as a strategy that is meant to bring goods of an acceptable quality to the market with comparatively lower production costs than its competitors (Strydom 2004). This is achieved through careful and effective management of the cost drivers for the business where it seeks to be a low cost producer while at the same time retaining competitive advantage (Strydom 2004). The other competitive priority that can be adopted by Nike is differentiation. According to Porter (1985:120), differentiation is â€Å"the process when the company provides something unique that is valuable to buyers beyond simply offering low price.† Thus, differentiation strategy is mainly concerned with identifying unique features about a particular product that have a broad perceived value in the market. 2. Nike should reduce product proliferation in an attempt to reduce their supply chain complexity and costs. Product proliferation suggests that there is a rapid growth of a particular product which may be counter-productive as far as demand and supply are concerned. According to the law of demand and supply, when there is high demand the price is likely to go up and this means an increase in the production of new products where costs are likely to be recovered while at the same time an increase in supply will lower the prices (Kotler 1999). Oversupply of products can result in

Agile Software Development Methodologies Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Agile Software Development Methodologies - Essay Example This paper presents an overview of the agile software development methodologies. The basic purpose of this research is to show that 'agile software development methodologies' are a superior design method that is why Scrum and XP rapidly emerging frameworks as  methodologies. This software development methodology is simple and much faster than all other traditional software development approaches. Basically, agile software development methodologies are based on iterations. In this scenario, small teams work jointly with other project stakeholders or customer to make out rapid prototypes, proof of concepts, or a wide variety of features in an attempt to classify the issue to be solved. In addition, the project team determines the necessary requirements for the iteration, develops the prototype, creates and runs suitable test scripts, and the user of the system authenticates the results of the tests. In the entire scenario, confirmation appears much earlier in the project development life cycle than it would with other traditional software development methodologies, and as a result allowing stakeholders to change requirements at the same time as they are still moderately painless to change (Serena, 2007; Rehman, ullah, Rauf, & Shahid, 2010). As discussed above, agile software development methodologies adopt the incremental and iterative way to improve the efficiency and usefulness of the overall software development process. ... bt, the customer’s contribution and active participation in the software development process helps software project teams build exact and high quality product. Another most important advantage of agile software development methodologies is that they do not engage a lot of documentation for the reason that the software development team depends almost completely on informal internal communication. In addition, agile software development methodologies offer an excellent support for the implementation of changes and continually revising any other stage of the software development process. Additionally, the outcomes of the agile software development methodologies come out in small incremental editions or releases keeping in mind the changing requirements of the project. If a change has been made to the existing requirements, then it is updated in the next iteration. Thus, the basic goal of agile software development methodologies is to give pleasure to the customers by satisfying t heir requirements at any stage of the project development life cycle (Rehman, ullah, Rauf, & Shahid, 2010; Boehm & Turner, 2003). In addition, the agile software development methodologies are aimed at effectively dealing with the changes throughout the software development process. For instance, agile development methodologies such as SCRUM, Feature-Driven Development, and eXtreme Programming (XP) intend to minimize the expenses of changes all the way through the software development life cycle. In this scenario, XP is based on the quick iterative planning and development cycles with the intention of forcing trade-offs and offering the utmost value characteristics as soon as possible. Also, XP incorporates a wonderful characteristic recognized as â€Å"constant and systemic testing† to