KM is the process of creating value from the intangible assets of an enterprise. It deals with how best to leverage knowledge internally in the enterprise (in its individual employees, and the knowledge that gets built into its structures and systems) and externally to the customers and stakeholders. As KM initiatives, projects and systems are just beginning to appear in organisations, there is little research and empirical field data to guide the successful development and implementation of such systems or to guide the expectations of the potential benefits of such systems. In addition, about 84 per cent of KM programmes failed or exerted no significant impact on the adopting organisations worldwide due to inability to consider many critical factors that contribute to the success of KM project implementation. Hence, this study is an exploratory investigation into the KM implementation based on an integrated approach. This includes: (1) a comprehensive review of the relevant literature; (2) a comprehensive analysis of secondary case studies of KM implementations in 90 organisations presented in the literature, in order to arrive at the most critical factors of KM implementation and their degree of criticality; (3) exploratory global survey of 92 organisations in 23 countries that have already implemented or are in the process of implementing KM; (4) in-depth case studies of four leading organisations to understand how KM implementation processes and the critical factors identified are being addressed. Based on the empirical findings of the study, 28 critical factors were identified that must be carefully considered in the KM implementation to achieve a successful project. Moreover, the study proposes an integrated model for effective KM implementation which contains essential elements that contribute to project success.

Mémoire numérisé par la Division de la gestion de documents et des archives de l'Université de Montréal

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Made available in DSpace on 2015-04-11T14:02:51Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Sergio Roberto Costa Vieira.pdf: 3218639 bytes, checksum: 3935b43e35cc99b70f873c5ddb6e1882 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2012-07-18 / This thesis presents a requirements elicitation technique guided by business processes modeling. This technique, called REMO (Requirements elicitation by oriented Business Process Modeling), uses a set of heuristics to extract the software requirements from business process diagrams. The purpose of the technique is to aid systems analysts in the identification of functional requirements, non-functional requirements, and business rules. To accomplish such task, the REMO technique uses business process diagrams created using the BPMN (Business Process Modeling Notation) notation. This thesis describes how the REMO technique was created and evaluated using an empirical-based research method. Furthermore, we present the analyses of the results obtained through three controlled experiments, which showed evidence that the REMO technique may be considered useful to be applied in software development during a requirements elicitation. / Esta dissertação apresenta uma técnica de elicitação de requisitos orientada pela modelagem de processos de negócios. A técnica de elicitação é denominada como REMO (Requirements Elicitation oriented by business process MOdeling), uma técnica que utiliza um conjunto de heurísticas para extrair os requisitos de software a partir dos diagramas de processos de negócios. O propósito da técnica é apoiar os analistas de sistemas na identificação dos requisitos funcionais, não funcionais e regras de negócios a partir dos diagramas de processos de negócios feitos em BPMN (Business Process Modeling Notation). Esta dissertação descreve como a técnica REMO foi elaborada e avaliada por meio de um método de pesquisa baseado em experimentação. Além disso, apresentam-se as análises dos resultados obtidos de três estudos experimentais controlados, que apontaram indícios de que a técnica REMO pode ser considerada útil para ser aplicada no desenvolvimento de software durante a elicitação de requisitos.

Context. Global Software Development (GSD) is the plan of action in which software development is performed under temporal, political, organizational and cultural boundaries. Offshore outsourced software development is the part of GSD, which refers to the transfer of certain software development activities to an external organization in another country. The primary factors driving offshore outsourced software development are low cost, access to a large pool of skilled laborers, increased productivity, high quality, market access and short development cycle. Requirements engineering (RE) and especially requirements elicitation is highly affected by the geographical distribution and multitude of stakeholders. Objectives. The goal of conducting this study is to explore the challenges and solutions associated with requirements elicitation phase during offshore software projects, both in research literature and in industrial practice. Moreover, this study examines that which of the challenges and practices reported in literature can be seen in industrial practice. This helped in finding out the similarities and differences between the state of art and state of practice. Methods. Data collection process has been done through systematic literature review (SLR) and web survey. SLR has been conducted using guidelines of Kitchenham and Charters. During SLR, The studies have been identified from the most reliable and authentic databases such as Compendex, Inspec (Engineering village) and Scopus. In the 2nd phase, survey has been conducted with 391 practitioners from various organizations involved in GSD projects. In the 3rd phase, qualitative comparative analysis has been applied as an analysis method. Results. In total 10 challenges and 45 solutions have been identified from SLR and survey. Through SLR, 8 challenges and 22 solutions have been identified. While through industrial survey, 2 additional challenges and 23 additional solutions have been identified. By analyzing the frequency of challenges, the most compelling challenges are communication, control and socio-cultural issues. Conclusions. The comparison between theory and practice explored the most compelling challenges and their associated solutions. It is concluded that socio-cultural awareness and proper communication between client and supplier organization’s personnel is paramount for successful requirements elicitation. The scarcity of research literature in this area suggests that more work needs to be done to explore some strategies to mitigate the impact of additional 2 challenges revealed through survey. / 0046 707123094

Mutation testing is a powerful, but resource intense technique for asserting software quality. This report investigates two claims about one of the mutation operators on procedural logic, the relation operator replacement (ROR). The constrained ROR mutant operator is a type of constrained mutation, which targets to lower the number of mutants as a “do smarter” approach, making mutation testing more suitable for industrial use. The findings in the report shows that the hypothesis on subsumption is rejected if mutants are to be detected on function return values. The second hypothesis stating that a test case can only detect a single top-level mutant in a subsumption graph is also rejected. The report presents a comprehensive overview on the domain of mutation testing, displays examples of the masking behaviour previously not described in the field of mutation testing, and discusses the importance of the granularity where the mutants should be detected under execution. The contribution is based on literature survey and experiment. The empirical findings as well as the implications are discussed in this master dissertation.

[pt] Sistemas de software estão evoluindo frequentemente devido a diversas requisições de mudanças. A medida que o software evolui, seu tamanho e complexidade aumentam, e consequentemente, sua arquitetura tende a se degradar. Sintomas de degradação arquitetural são por muitas vezes uma consequência direta da inserção progressiva de anomalias de código. Uma anomalia de código é uma estrutura da implementação recorrente que possivelmente indica problemas mais severos no projeto arquitetural. Anomalia de código é considerada crítica quando ela está relacionada problemas estruturais na arquitetura do software. Sua criticidade origina-se da sua influência negativa em uma ampla gama de requisitos não-funcionais. Por exemplo, a presença e anomalias e código críticas dificulta a manutenibilidade e software., ex. uma grande refatoração pode ser necessária para remover um problema arquitetural. Diversas abordagens tem sido propostas para a detecção de anomalias em sistemas de software, mas nenhuma delas suporta eficientemente a priorização e classificação de anomalias de código críticas de acordo com seu impacto na arquitetura. O presente trabalho investiga como a priorização e classificação dessas anomalias críticas de código pode se melhorado com o uso de blueprints arquiteturais. Blueprints arquiteturais são providos pelo arquiteto de software desde estágios iniciais de desenvolvimento do sistema. Blueprints são modelos de projeto informais normalmente definidos para capturar e comunicar as principais decisões de projeto arquitetural. Embora blueprints normalmente sejam incompletos e inconsistentes com respeito a implementação do sistema, eles podem contribuir para o processo de priorização e classificação de anomalias de código críticas. Com o intuito de alcançar nossos objetivos de pesquisa, um conjunto de estudos empíricos foram realizados. O trabalho também propõe e avalia um conjunto de heurísticas para auxiliar desenvolvedores na priorização e classificação de anomalias de código em 3 sistemas de software. Os resultados mostraram uma acurácia média de mais de 60 porcento na priorização e classificação de anomalias de código associadas com problemas arquiteturais nesses sistemas. / [en] Software systems are often evolving due to many changing requirements. As the software evolves, it grows in size and complexity, and consequently, its architecture design tends to degrade. Architecture degradation symptoms are often a direct consequence of the progressive insertion of code anomalies in the software implementation. A code anomaly is a recurring implementation structure that possibly indicates deeper architectural design problems. Code anomaly is considered critical when it is related with a structural problem in the software architecture. Its criticality stems from its negative influence on a wide range of non-functional requirements. For instance, the presence of critical code anomalies hinders software aintainability, i.e. these critical anomalies require wide refactoring in order to remove an architectural problem. Symptoms of architecture degradation have often to be observed in the source code due to the lack of an explicit, formal representation of the software architecture in a project. Many approaches are proposed for detecting code anomalies in software systems, but none of them efficiently support the prioritization and ranking of critical code anomalies according to their architecture impact. Our work investigates how the prioritization and ranking of such critical code anomalies could be improved by using blueprints. Architecture blueprints are usually provided by software architects since the early stages of the system development. Blueprints are informal design models usually defined to capture and communicate key architectural design decisions. Even though blueprints are often incomplete and inconsistent with respect to the underlying implementation, we aim to study if their use can contribute to improve the processes of prioritizing and ranking critical code anomalies. Aiming to address these research goals, a set of empirical studies has been performed. We also proposed and evaluated a set ofheuristics to support developers when prioritizing and ranking code anomalies in 3 software systems. The results showed an average accuracy higher than 60 percent when prioritizing and ranking code anomalies associated with architectural problems in these systems.

This thesis is the documentation of an empirical study using quantitative methods to identify variables that are impacting on the delivery of Music in the learning area Arts and Culture in South Africa. These variables were extrapolated from surveys, interviews and questionnaires. The learning area Arts and Culture is one of the eight compulsory learning areas for all learners from Grades 4-9 in South Africa. One of the four strands is Music. The research question was formulated on the basis that a perceived problem existed in the delivery of Music in the learning area Arts and Culture. This supposition is supported by the literature review. The employment of univariate descriptive statistics, cross-tabulations of two-variable relationships and chi-squared tests to draw inferences about the relationship between categorical variables were adopted to quantify which variables are impacting on the delivery of Music in the learning area Arts and Culture. Four dominant approaches to Music were defined as key issues: -- Governmental policies on educational reform -- Learning area Arts and Culture -- International viewpoints -- An African perspective on Music The findings on these dominant approaches to Music revealed that the government policy of decentralisation was employed as a mechanism to address the disparities in education. The curriculum implemented, Curriculum 2005, was also employed as a structure to redress the dispersed education system that existed prior to the democratic participation of South African citizens. A comparative analysis of international countries reviewed depicts arts education as an encompassing field with discrete arts disciplines. South Africa, conversely, adopts an integrated approach to the arts in the learning area Arts and Culture. This aligns to an African perspective of Music, having no subject boundaries and with the performing arts disciplines seldom separated in creative thinking. The findings in these dominant approaches to Music led to the further delineation of the research question into three main avenues of inputs: -- human resources -- physical resources -- the societal role of the arts The analysis of the data obtained from the educators indicated that all educators possess a qualification of some kind, but that there is a lack of specialisation in Music. Those who have an arts qualification alluded to the fact that they have a natural bias towards the art form in which they received their training. Statistical analysis proved that the type of school influences the level of implementation, the budget and the accessibility of resources for Music. The research indicates that the response of the learners to the learning area Arts and Culture in South Africa is associated with the grade of the learner, the race of the learner and whether the learner acknowledges the value of learning about Music or not. Although school principals view the learning area as an integral part of education, they raised justified concerns pertaining to the learning area. On the basis of the identification and quantification of variables impacting on the delivery of Music in the learning area Arts and Culture in South Africa, recommendations are made. / Thesis (DMus)--University of Pretoria, 2006. / Music / unrestricted

Bakgrund: Forskning påvisar att självskadeproblematiken har ökat vilket delvis kan bero på samhällets ökande krav på unga människor. I omvårdnadsmöten med unga människor som har ett självskadebeteende redovisar forskning att sjuksköterskor brister i att uppmärksamma patienternas verkliga problem på grund av att de saknar kunskap. Detta kan leda till frustration och maktlöshet. Syfte: Studiens syfte var att beskriva på vilket sätt sjuksköterskan skapar omvårdnadsmöten med unga människor som har ett självskadebeteende. Metod: Empirisk studie med kvalitativ ansats utifrån semistrukturerande intervjuer med fyra sjuksköterskor verksamma vid barn-och ungdomspsykiatrin. Innehållsanalys modifierad efter Malterud (2009). Resultat: Ur innehållsanalysen har tre kategorier utvecklats; Insikt om den andre, Insikt om sig själv och Insikt om att ta hjälp av andra. Dessa beskriver betydelsen av att sjuksköterskan har insikt i mötet med unga människor som skadar sig själva. Slutsats: Analysens resultat, Insikt om den andre, Insikt om sig själv och Insikt om att ta hjälp av andra förtydliggjorda och förklarade med Erikssons teori att mötet med unga människor med ett självskadebeteende sätts lidandet i ett nytt ljus, sjuksköterskan har modet att bekräfta sig själv och att det finns samspel i en gemenskap. Klinisk betydelse: Förhoppningen med denna studie är att upplysa blivande sjuksköterskor och legitimerade sjuksköterskor om innebörden av att ha insikt om den sårbara patienten, insikt om sig själv och insikt om att se sina begränsningar för att ta hjälp av andra genom reflektion och kunskap. / Background: Research shows that self-injury problems have increased which may partly be due to society's increasing demands on young people. In nursing meetings with young people who have a self-injury, research reports that nurses fail to pay attention to patients' real problems because of their lack of knowledge. This can lead to frustration and powerlessness. Objective: The aim of the study was to describe how nurses create care meetings with young people who have a self-harm behavior. Method: Empirical study with qualitative approach based on semi-structuring interviews with four nurses working in child and adolescent psychiatry. Content analysis modified after Malterud (2009). Results: From the content analysis three categories developed; insight about the other, insight about oneself, and insight of the support of others. This describes the role of the nurse insight in dealing with young people who harm themselves. Conclusion: Analysis results, Insight about the other, Insight about oneself and Insight to enlist the help of other clarified and explained by Erikson's theory that when dealing with young people with self-harm is suffering in a new light, the nurse has the courage to acknowledge himself and that there is interaction in a solidarity. Clinical significance: The hope of this study is to inform prospective nurses and registered nurses the importance of having knowledge of the vulnerable patient, understanding oneself and insight to see its limitations in order to enlist the help of others through reflection and knowledge.

[pt] O gerenciamento da cadeia de suprimento (GCS) recebeu muita atenção de acadêmicos e praticantes da indústria no que tange a grandes empresas. Contudo, existe uma carência de estudos do GCS focados em pequenas empresas. Isto se faz necessário em função das diferenças entre as realidades de grandes e pequenas empresas, implicando na dificuldade de aproveitar o conhecimento acumulado já existente de GCS para as pequenas empresas, e na importância que as pequenas empresas têm para a economia de diversos países, em particular as emergentes, como a Brasileira. Neste contexto, a presente dissertação de mestrado tem como objetivo avançar no conhecimento do GCS em pequenas empresas por meio da análise de práticas de GCS em empresas no Estado do Rio de Janeiro (Brasil). As práticas analisadas nesta pesquisa são gestão de relacionamento com o cliente, práticas de gerenciamento de operações, planejamento e processos de negócios e gestão do relacionamento com fornecedores. A metodologia adotada é composta de três etapas, as quais visam através da adoção das quatro abordagens do MIT GeneSys coletar dados acerca do perfil do gerente e da empresa, das práticas de negócios utilizadas pela empresa, mapear os ativos da empresa, verificar quais práticas de GCS são utilizadas, determinar quais atividades e quanto tempo o tomador de decisões gasta nelas e em quais atividades ele gasta mais tempo. Sendo consolidada nessa dissertação a assessoria dada às empresas, pois após todo o processo da coleta de dados foi realizado um feedback à empresa, através de uma apresentação dos resultados com as recomendações. Como resultado, a dissertação oferece um guia prático para implementar e gerir com sucesso práticas de GCS em pequenas empresas, o qual está disponível para que as empresas possam utilizar. / [en] Supply chain management (SCM) has received a lot of attention from academics and industry practitioners when it comes to large companies. However, there is a shortage of SCM studies focused on small enterprises. This is necessary due to the differences between the realities of large and small enterprises, resulting in the difficulty of harnessing the existing accumulated knowledge of SCM for small enterprises, and the importance that small enterprises have for the economy of various countries, particularly emerging ones, such as the Brazilian. In this context, this master dissertation aims to advance the knowledge of SCM in small enterprises by analyzing SCM practices in enterprises in the State of Rio de Janeiro (Brazil). The practices analyzed in this research are customer relationship management, operations management practices, planning and business processes and supplier relationship management. The methodology adopted consists of three stages, which aim to adopt the four approaches of MIT GeneSys to collect data about the profile of the manager and the company, the business practices used by the company, map the company s assets, verify which practices of SCM are used, determining which activities and how much time the decision maker spends on them and on what activities he spends the most time. The advice given to the companies was consolidated in this dissertation, since after the entire data collection process, a feedback was made to the company, through a presentation of the results with the recommendations. As a result, the dissertation provides a hands-on guide for successfully implementing and managing small enterprises SCM practices, which is available for the companies to use.