SCHOOL BUSINESS MANAGEMENT COMPETENCIES FOR IMPROVED ADMINISTRATIVE EFFECTIVENESS IN PUBLIC SECONDARY SCHOOLS IN RIVERS STATE NIGERIA

The study investigated school business competencies for improved administrative effectiveness in Public Secondary School in Rivers State. Three research questions and two null hypotheses were formulated to guide the study. The population of the study was 286 principals in all the public secondary schools in Rivers State. A sample of 166 through a stratified random technique was determined using the Taro Yamane formula. The instrument of the study was a self design instrument captioned “School Business Management Competencies Questionnaire (SBMCQ) and Principal Administrative Effectiveness (PAE) with the reliability coefficients of 0.77 and 0.84 respectively which was determined through the Cronbach alpha statistics. Mean scores and standard deviation was used to answer the research questions while Pearson Product Moment Correlation Coefficient was sued to test the hypothesis. It was discovered that the highest kind of business available in the public school is related to cafeteria / canteen services and that also to a high extent, resourcefulness as a business management competency improves administrative effectiveness in public secondary schools in Rivers State. It concluded that for the school administrators to manage the school business effective (administrative effectiveness), they must possess the core competence of resourcefulness, conceptual thinking and administrative organisation. It was recommended among others that the principal should have a comprehensive understanding of the school complex nature and also think critically at both abstract and concrete level to harmonize a rather multifaceted business challenges in the school and proffer realistic solutions.

Sxp: Simplified Extreme Programming Process Model

Software development is a critical task that require comprehensive guidelines in the form of software development process model. Plan driven software development models were the earliest models that mostly provide sequential development approach. With the passage of time, changing business environment, needs and technologies made these models inappropriate for software development.Agile models were emerged to overcome the limitations of traditional plan driven software development models.These models received a huge acceptance from software industry due to their distinguishing features and practices. Extreme Programming is one of the renowned agile model that uses agile practices to handle unclear and changing requirements with good level of customer satisfaction.It uses iterative and incremental approach to develop a quality software in considerable short time duration. It works well for small scale projects however some of its limitation make it less suitable for medium and large scale projects. Lack of documentation, poor architectural structure and less focus on design are its major limitations that effect its performance. Furthermore some of its practices like on-site-customer and pair programming are a bit controversial that cannot be applied in every situation or may overburden development process when applied. To overcome these limitations and make XP suitable for medium scale projects, a customized version of XP called SXP (Simplified Extreme Programming Model is proposed in this research.Proposed model tried to cover these problem without effecting agility and simplicity of XP. SXP model introduced explicit analysis and design phase to solve design related issues. It also removes unnecessary norms of pair programming and on-site-customer practices. For validation and evaluation of this model a controlled case study is conducted. Two different teams developed medium scale projects using classical XP and Proposed SXP model respectively.Comparison of data collected against different quality parameters showed that SXP model provide considerably better results than classical XP.