Thesis (M. Sc.)--University of Hong Kong, 1990. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M. Sc.)--University of Hong Kong, 1994. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.B.A.)--Naval Postgraduate School, December 2003. / Thesis advisor(s): Michael Boudreau, David Lamm. Includes bibliographical references (p. 71-72). Also available online.

Maintaining multiple variants of software systems is extremely difficult because developers often port edits and bug fixes during software evolution. This challenge particularly applies to closely related families of open source projects, such as BSD projects (FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD) with extensive cross-project porting activities. Developers encounter increasing obstacles in maintaining projects, particularly because of the difficulty in understand- ing historical artifacts involved in cross-system porting. Maintainers face the primary challenge of keeping track of the sources of ported edits, as it can be extremely time-consuming to mine historical data and track the source and target of patches. In the worst-case scenario, the maintainer has to mine through all historical data to ascertain the sources of ported code. Although current version control systems like CVS and GIT preserve historical data, the developer cannot easily identify and understand cross-system porting activities. In this thesis, we address the aforementioned issues by designing and implementing software visualization support to analyze the long chain of cross- project porting activities for Open Source Softwares (OSS) and particularly for three BSD projects (FreeBSD, OpenBSD and NetBSD). We take into account the geographically distributed community of OSS developers and maintainers, hosting the visualization of the activities as a web application. This study aims to analyze the effects of visualization on cross-project porting activity awareness. To meet the study’s objective, we developed a web-based awareness tool, VIGNETTE, based on the results of REPERTOIRE [18] (which identifies the cross-project porting activities in BSD projects using release history). This study focuses on two research questions: (1) How can visualization help novice open-source developers and maintainers gain insights into cross- project (projects evolving from the same code base) porting activities? (2) How can the visualization show the following: (a) a file-level association between peer projects (porting activities in cross-project files with similar file names), (b) the pairwise frequency of porting (the porting activity count between two cross-projects in a year), (c) the patch-file association (same patch id applied to different cross-project files), and (d) the developer to developer association based on cross-project porting activities (number of times the cross-project developers was involved in a common porting activity)? We conducted a user study with graduate students in the role of novice open-source developers interested in learning about cross-project porting activities. The results of the initial study showed that VIGNETTE could be very useful in answering the questions about cross-project porting and in determining who was involved in a particular porting activity and when. / text

This study looks at the differences in lean project management between projects done in the public sector and projects done in the private sector. The private sector consist of companies around Sweden, while municipalities are representing the public sector in this study. This study is based on the understanding that the lean philosophy can have advantages for the efficiency of project management, both for the private and the public sector, knowing that there are differences in the nature of these organizations. This thesis begins with an introduction that explains the theory that is important for this research, and that describes the research gap that has been found. The research gap is the basis for the research questions. After defining the research questions, an examination has been done on existing literature about the concepts of lean, project management, project managers, and lean project management. Prior research gives ideas about the challenges project managers encounter, and shows in what way lean can influence the efficiency of projects. As part of this qualitative research, and with an inductive approach, 12 semi-structured interviews have been conducted. During this interviews, project managers and persons with a connection to projects in the different organization were asked to describe projects in their organizations. This study is exploratory and has a cross-sectional design as the center of attention was on different organizations from both the private and the public sector in different parts of Sweden. In the analysis the results of the interviews are categorized and interpreted. The results show that projects are used in every organization, making use of, in almost every case, a project model which makes sure that different projects are run in similar ways. Although different organizations make use of the principles of lean, no organization is implementing the ideas completely. Major differences that have been found are differences in the background of the project manager, the level of standardization of projects, and differences in efficiency that in many situations are caused by legislation. It became clear that projects in the private sector are organized in a stricter way, with experienced project managers that follow project models strictly. In the public sector projects are mostly led by project managers that are interested in a certain project, and in those organizations project models are not followed strictly. As for lean projects, we have found no real evidence that any organization is currently having projects organized according to the lean principles. This can be expected however, seeing that lean project management is a generally unexplored part of the lean philosophy.

The aim of the research is to establish the potentIal of au approach to formative evaluation which utilizes and develops the skills of teachers. This 'teacher evaluator' approach depends on teachers planning, directing, controlling and carrying out evaluations. A detailed case study of the practice as it developed in one LEA over a three year period was undertaken. The research contributes to the debate about educational evaluation practice in five areas: It advances theory of educational particular reference to the UK. -It identifies an approach which enhances the professionalism of teachers. -Through the publication of a detailed case study it promotes the development of theory from the reality of practice. -It provides the ground work for forging new links between professional educational evaluators and the teaching profession. -It defines an approach to evaluation which has the potential to provide timely, relevant, and effective, formative evaluation. The teacher evaluator approach to evaluation can be seen as a natural extension of the developing research tradition in the UK which was stimulated by the work of Stenhouse. In the UK, partvcularly since Stenhouse published hiS seminal work in 1975, there have been a number of developments in educational evaluation practices particularly in the area of qualitative evaluation through action-research and school self-evaluation. It is the contention of this thesis that the teacher-evaluator approach fills a gap in this developing teacher-researcher tradition - that of LEA-wide project evaluation by teachers. Through careful examination of the evidence collected, the significance of thls development in the teacher~based research tradition, was analysed and subsequently confirmed. An approach such as this, which hands over the power of evaluation to teachers, is especially relevant in the light of current demands for accountability in education. However, the success and effectiveness of the approach was found to be affected by a variety of issues. These issues are covered in detail in the text and relate to three key areas: the framework established for the evaluation which depends on the local context; the role and responsibilities of the teacher-evaluators; the methodology and practices adopted. It is conSidered that this approach prOVides the framework for a new model of educational evaluation which combines the strengths of professional external evaluation with the knowledge and expertise of teachers, and which provides long term benefits for the LEA. ThiS case study is presented as a contribution to the development of an educational research tradition which Stenhouse identifies as essential to the improvement of education. Publication of this research may further stimulate work in thiS area and thus contribute to the advancement of theories relating to teacher-led evaluation.

Agile project management and software development practices have become widely accepted in the industry and much of the currently published literature focuses on the developer's uptake of the methodology. Although it is commonly known that customers play a key role in Agile project success, the extent to which they can influence a project is not as well understood. This case study measures the contribution of customer involvement to the success of Agile projects. The study demonstrates that active customer participation is one of the top three factors for successful Agile projects. It also demonstrates that successful Agile projects have customers that are "knowledgeable, committed, collaborative, representative, and empowered". Similarly, the study shows that successful Agile projects have customers who transfer domain knowledge to project team members efficiently and effectively. The study concludes with recommendations for developers and customers that maximize an Agile project's potential for success. / text

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published_or_final_version / abstract / toc / Educational Psychology / Master / Master of Social Sciences

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