This diploma thesis aims at the development of agile software projects of an existing company. The main goal of this dissertation has been to identify and analyze the most frequent current problems of the company, then to summarize their impact and to propose the best possible way of dealing with them. As an integral part, the aim of the dissertation has also been the creation of an internal knowledge base which can help to prevent those problems from happening in future projects and to share mutual experiences. To fulfil this goal, it has been necessary to learn all the problems of the agile software development, to know the most widely used agile methodologies and some latest facts and recent trends in the area of agile projects. It has also been necessary to carry out the SWOT analysis of the company and analyze the results of the internal agile development survey. The next thing which had to be done was the identification and description of the most frequent problems of agile development projects and the assessment of the categories of projects which occur in the company and linking the problems with each of the categories. The content of the internal knowledge base was created to correspond with the results of my diploma thesis. The contribution of this dissertation is the identification and assessment of the most fre-quent problems of agile projects of an existing company, identification of possible impacts and recommendation of possible solutions. The other contribution is the identification of the project categories which are linked to the identified problems. Last but not least, the main benefit of this thesis is the creation of a new internal project management knowledge base which will help to share the experience among all the projects and in this way it will help to prevent the spread of these problems. This diploma thesis is divided into two main parts, theoretical and practical. In the theoretical part, there is a definition of "agile methodologies", a description of their typical examples and statistics as well as modern trends in the area of the development of agile projects. The practical part is divided into four chapters. They contain the results of the company's SWOT analysis and the results of the internal agile development survey. Then there is a presentation of the identified agile development problems, their possible impact and the recommendation how to deal with them. There is a full description of all the identified categories of projects and their identified problems with their assessment criteria as well as time-proven ways how to effectively deal with them. The last chapter contains and internal project management knowledge base which has been done by myself. The knowledge base may be very useful in the project management now and in the future.

This diploma thesis deals with the process of learning, knowledge management and the concept of learning organization as strategic directions in the field of education, learning and development of employees. The theoretical part describes knowledge management as an essential part of the management of a successfully functioning and continuously developing organization, which is exposed to increasing pressure of competition, demanding clients and economic burden. In this case the setting of corporate culture towards the learning organization is equally important. Since the organization set up in this direction has created a suitable environment for the effective development of knowledge, skills and experience, not only in the classical form of lifelong learning, which is given in case of the general nurses by legislation, but above all the creation, development and transfer of knowledge between individuals and the team is emphasized. In the practical part, first the selected organization is analyzed including analysis of fulfilling the criteria of the learning organization followed by the qualitative research devoted in the first stage to mapping the system of education and development of the employees in the organization and in the second phase to finding the attitudes of the nurses within a...

This study is about the perceptions, feelings, attitudes and knowledge of people towards government with regard to service delivery and participation with communities in order to accelerate social development. Government's enthusiasm to get things done often results in development not occurring at all. Entering into balanced partnerships with the private sector and communities needs to be explored a lot deeper. It must be borne in mind that people's attitudes, perceptions and feelings may differ according to the different strata of government. The study was undertaken to ascertain how people feel and thereby assess how effective government has been in the past seven years. This in turn will enable government to focus its efforts in the right direction. The study took into account various theoretical issues regarding the role of the state in developing a nation, the importance of knowledge and the management thereof as well as the changing face of development over the years. The shift in paradigm of the study of development is discussed as a matter of importance with structural adjustment programmes often resulting in slowed development and negative economic growth. Often schools of thought in development try to impose their thinking, but what this paper proposes is that schools of thought are not of importance here but quality of life in terms of social development and empowerment are. The study was conducted by means of three focus groups whereby each focus group had different characteristics. After the focus groups were conducted coding of the information gathered took place so as to facilitate analysis and interpretation. The study found that people are generally happy with the efforts of national government but that the delivery of service by regional and local government does not meet their expectations. It is also clear that the private and NGO sector seem to concentrate on the big urban townships whilst ignoring the plight of rural areas. The road ahead seems to indicate that consultation must take place and be improved with the communities as well as with big business who wish to develop their social responsibility programmes. It is recommended that local government be improved in terms of its effectiveness and responsiveness to its communities. Private sector must also re-assess its role in social development in the communities of its employees. The importance of this is then that government and private sector can work together in partnership in order to accelerate the pace of development. The credibility of government amongst the people as well as the reinforcement of democracy is at stake and the development of impoverished areas by ways of innovative strategies can only benefit all the peoples of our country. / Thesis (MA (Sociology))--University of Pretoria, 2004. / Sociology / unrestricted

Studien syftar att få kunskap om hur inspiration från Reggio Emilia filosofi kan användas som en pedagogisk resurs för lärandet för hållbar utveckling i förskolan. Huvudfrågan i arbetet är: Vilka metoder, strategier och synsätt använder pedagoger i lärandet för hållbar utveckling i förskolan? Kvalitativa intervjuer med förskollärare används som en metod för att uppnå studiesyftet och besvara frågan. Data analyserades för att visa vilka metoder och strategier pedagoger använder i lärandet för hållbar utveckling, samt att ta fram fördelar och hinder som finns i Reggio Emilias förhållningssätt i relation till lärandet. Studiens resultat visar att lärandet för hållbar utveckling i förskolan är en viktig del av förskoleverksamheten som hjälper barn att skapa en relation till naturen, utveckla kunskap, respekt och ansvar för natur och miljö. Pedagogerna jobbar för att ge barnen möjligheter att möta olika variationer av miljö och naturmaterial. Upplevelser som barn får i naturen väcker barns intresse, motivation och lust att lära sig för att veta mer om omvärlden. Barns intresse får styra lärandet. Lärandet sker i gruppen genom kommunikation och dialog, där barnen deltar aktivt i lärandet och skapar kunskap om natur och miljö. Medforskande närvarande förskollärare lär barn olika verktyg för att ta reda på saker själva. Värdegrundsarbete är det viktigaste området i lärandet för att barn ska utveckla respekt och ansvar för naturen. Fördelar i Reggio Emilia filosofi är syn på kompetenta barn, demokratiskt arbetssätt, inspirerande och stöttande lärandemiljö och pedagogisk dokumentation vilka hjälper att skapa kultur av hållbarhet och utveckla barns handlingsberedskap för en hållbar framtid. / The study aims to develop knowledge about how inspiration from Reggio Emilia's philosophy can be used as an educational resource for teaching about sustainable development in preschool. The main question is: Which methods, strategies and approaches do teachers use in learning for sustainable development in preschool? Qualitative interviews with preschool teachers are used as a method for achieving the aim of the study and answering the research question. The data has been analysed to indicate which methods and strategies preschool teachers use in learning for sustainable development, as well as to define advantage and barriers found in Reggio Emilia's philosophy in relation to that learning. The result shows that learning for sustainable development in preschool is an important part of preschool activities that helps children create a relationship with nature, develop knowledge, respect and responsibility for nature and the environment. The teachers work to give the children opportunities to meet different variations of the environment and natural materials. Experiences that children get in nature arouse children's interest, motivation and desire to learn to know more about nature and the environment. Children's interest may guide learning. This learning takes place in the group through communication and dialogue, where the children participate actively in learning and create knowledge about nature and the environment. The teachers introduce many different tools to the children to enable them to explore things by themselves. Working with fundamental values is the most important part of the learning to enhance children´s development of respect and sense of responsibility for nature. The advantages of Reggio Emilia philosophy are the view of children as competent, democratic working methods, inspirational and supportive learning environment and pedagogical documentation which help to create culture of sustain-ability and develop children's readiness for action for a sustainable future.

Bereits seit einigen Jahrzehnten ist in unserer spätmodernen Gesellschaft eine Transformation zur Wissensgesellschaft zu beobachten (Hebestreit 2013). Das Zukunftsinstitut bezeichnet dies als „Megatrend Wissenskultur“, der für Transparenz, Zugänglichkeit, Demokratie und Dynamik von Wissen steht (Zukunftsinstitut GmbH 2015). Was ein Mensch im Mittelalter im Laufe eines gesamten Lebens an Informationen verarbeitete, können wir heute an einem einzigen Tag einer Tageszeitung entnehmen (Broßmann & Mödinger 2011). Dieses Beispiel verdeutlicht das exponentielle Informations- und Wissenswachstum, das konträrer Weise mit einer drastischen Wissensabnahme einhergeht, da unser Wissen immer schneller veraltet (ebd.).

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This thesis contains theoretical definitions of a knowledge-based company, human capital development and education. The second part analyzes the data obtained from the monitored period 2008-2012 and includes standardized and non-standardized interviews, overt participant observation and a questionnaire survey.

In this knowledge economy, organizations are leveraging their competence through the knowledge they possess. Managing knowledge will potentially retain the competence held by the organization if knowledge generated across its projects and units is captured, structured and reused. Even though many tools and techniques are proposed in the literature to support these activities, their adoption in industry has been meagre. This may be due to development of tools without basing them on substantial and careful descriptive studies. This raises the following research issues: the knowledge processes and knowledge sources available in organizations and their characteristics need to be understood better. To address these gaps, following objectives are addressed in this research: ♦ To understand the specific needs and capability of the organization for capture and reuse of product development knowledge and ♦ To evaluate various alternative supports for capture and structure of relevant, evolving product development knowledge for reuse. To address these objectives, two observational studies were conducted in the organizations. To get a broader picture about the knowledge processes occurring in the organization, a KRIT model is proposed which is an acronym for Knowledge of solutions-Requirements-Interactions-Tasks, in which interactions of the designers with people and tools play the central role in processing knowledge during design. The KRIT model is validated through the demonstration of the existence of its nodes and links. From the observations it has been found that interactions ‘designer working with computer’, ‘two designers working with a computer’ and ‘two designers interacting with each other’ are most frequently occurred, and occupied most of the time during designing. Any tools to support knowledge capture and reuse should support these interactions such that capture and reuse can be intuitive and in-built in a natural way into a designer’s work habits. It is emphasized that there is a substantial need to increase the percentage of time spent by designers on capturing knowledge during the design process. This increase in time would lead to decrease in a designers’ time spent on knowledge acquisition and dissemination provided designers are capturing reusable knowledge. To answer capture and reuse of knowledge in detail in the observational studies, a new taxonomy of knowledge is proposed. By linking the representations of argumentation, designer’s activities, and the artefact being designed, we argued that the expressiveness of this taxonomy is high compared to the others proposed in the literature. The taxonomy has three broad categories of knowledge: topics, classes, and activities. Based on the definitions of the factors used in the taxonomy and the analysis of the protocols, the factors in each group under each category are argued to be mutually exclusive. In order to study the links between the proposed categories and factors in the taxonomy of knowledge, a method for converting the questions and answers (from the protocol data) into a generic format is framed. The taxonomy is validated comprehensively, and is able to cover various stages of design. Most of the designers’ time was spent working with a CAD package, in which most of the kinds of knowledge mentioned in the proposed taxonomy of knowledge was neither captured not reused. The important observations noted by comparing the knowledge captured in the preliminary study and the main study are as follows: Compared to the preliminary study, process related information and knowledge are captured higher in the main study. In the main study behavioural related content is captured more; whereas in the preliminary study structural content is captured more. The factors organization, usage, maintenance and sales captured in the preliminary study are not at all captured in the main study. In order to assess the usefulness of the knowledge captured, the kinds of knowledge needs of designers were compared with the kinds of knowledge captured. The important observations about the knowledge needs are: Irrespective of the design stages, in almost 50% of the questions, designers interacted with others to know about old issues or proposals in both the studies. A designer’s time for designing would benefit considerably if the answers for these 50% of the old questions were captured and made available for retrieval in formal documents. In both the studies, proposals based questions played a vital role in the questions analyzed. It shows that considerable proportion of time was spent by the designers on validating, by asking questions, the answers known to them. In contrast to the preliminary study, the designers’ needs for process-related information or knowledge were much higher than that for product-related information or knowledge. Comparing the generic questions obtained from the knowledge needs and knowledge captured reveals that only 14% and 26% with product related content and only 10% and 11.3% of the process based content asked by designers during designing were captured in the preliminary and the main study. These results show that there is a mismatch between knowledge captured and knowledge needed by the designers. This may be one of the primary reasons for the poor usage of documents in the organization. The generic questions generated from the questions asked by the designers and various documents will act as a guideline to the designers for what knowledge and information should and should not to be captured. Due to restrictions in the observations, a questionnaire survey was conducted to achieve the objective to collect 10% of total number of employees’ perspectives about the issues considered in this research. The important observations from the analyses of the collected questionnaire are: Designers’ perceive all types of interactions as important and frequent for information generation and sharing. These results are contradictory to the personal observations in which only interactions ‘designer working with computer’ and ‘two designers working with a computer’ occurred frequently. This shows that designers are unable to identify the kinds of interaction which they perform in their daily activities. Due to this, the information processes occurring within these interactions are not perceptible to the designers. Designers perceive that they get the right information at the right time in only 4 or more out of 10 for most of the times. This perception illustrates there is substantial need for the development of support to satisfy the information needs of designers. Analyses of the types of questions reveal that the question asking behavior of the designers is not static; the major share of questions falling under the category ‘question from answer given’ could be interpreted as: designers often do not frame exact questions to fulfil their requirements; they grab the opportunity to take as much as knowledge as possible during an interaction. Analyses of the types of answers reveal that designers gave more inferences on their answers in order to give a better response, which in turn should help reduce the number of questions subsequently asked especially in the protocol coded as ‘new answer’. Two studies have been used to assess the effectiveness of seven tools for supporting knowledge capture and reuse. The important observations from the initial study are: Mobile E-Notes TakerTM is ranked higher because this equipment provides a blend of properties between the paper and computer. These observations stress the importance of features provided for knowledge generation, modification, capture and reuse in the system. The observations from analyzing the three top rated tools (Mobile E-Notes TakerTM, Tablet with viewing facility and Computer with RhinocerosTM CAD package) to understand influence of these tools on knowledge capture and reuse during conceptual designing are: The differences observed in the percentage of capture between the usage of the three tools demonstrate that tools have an influence on the knowledge capture activity. Even though none of the three tools capture adequate knowledge during designing, Mobile e-Notes TakerTM seems to be the best tool for capture compared to the other two tools, both in the original and redesign experiments. These results suggest that some other mechanisms should be added to these tools so that their effectiveness of capturing could be increased. One mechanism is to incorporate the proposed KRIT model and the taxonomy of knowledge during designing. This integration will be one of the good mechanisms to aid knowledge capture and reuse, because the knowledge capture will occur along with the knowledge creation process. We believe that through this integration the purpose to enhance the knowledge capture and reuse during the design process will be achieved.