Organizations has become more hybrid enabling the workers to work partially from the office and partially from home. As remote work was found to have an impact on team collaboration, communication, productivity, and performance, concerns have been raised about Agile Software Development (ASD) teams working remotely. Thus, the purpose of the study is to understand the impact hybrid work has on productivity in ASD teams. The study aims to contribute with knowledge regarding the relationship with hybrid work and productivity. A single case study was conducted, with the use of a sequential mixed method research design. The SPACE framework was utilized to define productivity in software development and was also utilized to support the distributed survey. Moreover, three dimensions of SPACE were selected; job satisfaction, performance, collaboration and communication. Additionally, a focus group interview was conducted to provide a deeper understanding of the survey findings. The empirical findings indicate the hybrid work to impact job satisfaction, and collaboration and communication positively. While the performance was high, there was a low impact of hybrid work. The empirical findings imply that investments in the tools and resources are crucial for the job satisfaction. Furthermore, meetings that involve high participation in collaboration and communication should require physical presence. By allowing for continuous meetings regarding the well-being of workers, a sustainable work-life balance can potentially be achieved. Limitations can be found in the study where the findings are restricted to the context of a single case study. Thus, further research can be conducted to enrich the findings with other settings and strategies. / Organisationer har blivit mer hybrida vilket gör det möjligt för arbetarna att arbeta delvis från kontoret och delvis hemifrån. Eftersom distansarbete har visat en inverkan på samarbete, kommunikation, produktivitet och prestanda i team, har det väckts rädsla om att team i agil mjukvaruutveckling (ASD), ska arbeta på distans. Syftet med studien är att förstå vilken inverkan hybrid arbete har på produktiviteten i ASD-team. Studien syftar till att bidra med kunskap om sambandet med hybrid arbete och produktivitet. En enskild fallstudie genomfördes med användning av en sekventiell forskningsdesign med blandad metod. SPACE-ramverket användes för att definiera produktivitet i mjukvaruutveckling och användes dessutom för att underbygga den distribuerade undersökningen. Dessutom valdes tre dimensioner av SPACE ut; arbetsglädje, prestation, samarbete och kommunikation. Vidare genomfördes en fokusgruppsintervju för att skapa en djupare förståelse av resultaten från undersökningen. De empiriska resultaten indikerar hybrid arbetet har en positiv inverkan på arbetstillfredsställelse, samarbete och kommunikation. Det visade sig att prestandan i arbetet var hög men att hybrid arbete inte längre påverkade dess resultat. De empiriska resultaten tyder på att investeringar i verktyg och resurser är avgörande för arbetstillfredsställelsen. Dessutom bör möten med högt engagemang i samarbete och kommunikation kräva fysisk närvaro. Genom att införa kontinuerliga möten angående arbetarnas välbefinnande kan en hållbar balans mellan arbete och privatliv potentiellt uppnås. Begränsningar kan hittas i studien där resultaten är begränsade till sammanhanget för en enskild fallstudie. Således kan ytterligare forskning utföras för att berika resultaten med andra miljöer och strategier.

Abstract   This study addresses the research gap on knowledge transfer on a team level, by examining the potential and realized Absorptive Capacity (ACAP) on the receiver's side and potential and realized Disseminative Capacity (DCAP) on the sender's side. The research question and purpose relate to how ACAP and DCAP can aid innovation development teams in reaching their goals and what role social integration mechanisms play in this process. We develop a theoretical framework in which we synthesize existing literature and through which we analyzed the empirical data.   We follow a qualitative method and employ a single case strategy that fits our empirical data and allows to gain an understanding of social dynamics underlying knowledge transfer. The data was collected through interviews in the R&D department of Atlas Copco, a large Swedish multinational corporation that operates in the mining and tunneling industry. From our analysis we conclude that social integration mechanisms can be used in order to lower the gap between potential and realized capacities. This can in turn lead to a higher innovative output of teams.

This study explored the views and experiences of School Management Teams (SMTs) when implementing Integrated Quality Management System (IQMS) in three primary schools in the Nkangala Region of the Mpumalanga Province, South Africa. A qualitative research approach was adopted and the data were collected by means of semi-structured interviews and document retrieval in schools. The data were then analysed by the constant comparative method. All the participants in this study expressed the view that IQMS is a teacher appraisal system with a potential to develop educators in schools provided both evaluators and evaluatees are honest with the evaluation process and are able to identify their areas of development. However the experience of the principals and deputy principals with the implementation of IQMS in schools reveals that educators inflate their scores and do not identify areas where they need development. The Development Support Groups (DSGs) do not conduct authentic evaluation since they serve the purpose of helping educators to qualify for salary progression. Participants recommended external evaluation as a solution to subjective ratings since external evaluators have a potential to provide objective and credible evaluation because they are unfamiliar with educators and do not experience the pressure to maintain collegiality in schools. A key recommendation is that the Department of Education should conduct effective training for the stakeholders involved with the implementation of IQMS in schools. / Dissertation (MEd)--University of Pretoria, 2010. / Education Management and Policy Studies / unrestricted

Nowadays, the hybrid working model has prevailed as the new working model for many organizations, which combines working remotely and onsite. Although the hybrid working model is not new, the Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated the transition from traditional working model to hybrid one, which results in greater use of technology, especially for the employees’ collaboration. Collaboration is at the core of agile development team members’ daily hybrid work, and it is achieved through the support of technology tools, such as Microsoft Teams. The hybrid working model, due to its complexity, creates opportunities and challenges to the way agile development team members’ work and collaborate. Therefore, it is important to examine the collaboration of agile development team members that follow the hybrid working model, as well as benefits and challenges that may arise. Thus, this master thesis examines, the technology-supported collaboration of agile development team members, that follow the hybrid working model, taking as an example Microsoft Teams (MS Teams). For this, an interpretive qualitative ethnographic research was conducted. The data was collected through participant observations, focus groups discussions, and semi-structured interviews from purposively selected team members of three agile development teams. The collected data was analyzed thematically and generated six themes. These six themes represent the findings of the master’s thesis research and are interpreted and discussed with the help of the theoretical framework, which includes the concepts of agile project management, computer-supported cooperative work, collaboration, cooperation, coordination, information sharing, communication and hybrid working model.   The research findings show that it is vital for the members of the agile development teams to use a collaboration tool in their daily hybrid work to assure close and frequent collaboration, which in the traditional working model was mainly achieved face-to-face on-site. Their collaboration includes communication, information sharing, and coordination activities, which are supported and facilitated by the technological tool of MS Teams. However, the hybrid working model has given rise to challenges in the collaboration among the agile development team members, which can be overcome if the technological tool of MS Teams is used properly by everyone. This research contributes to the existing knowledge of the informatics research field and the body of research of computer-supported cooperative work by providing a better understanding of how technological tools are used to support collaborating team members that follow the hybrid working model, including benefits and challenges experienced. It also contributes to agile development team members and other practitioners that use MS Teams through improved understanding of aspects that can be taken into consideration for the use of a collaboration technological tool, and the generation of guidelines for such technology in order to make the use of it most efficient.

Educational dispensation has brought about radical changes in schools, particularly with reference to curriculum changes and delivery, not only internationally but specifically in South Africa. With a move towards the introduction of new curricular in schools, the concept Continuous Professional Development has been revisited and thus has propagated further review on new approaches of teaching and learning, which leads to the need for establishment of school-based professional development of educators to meet the new challenges of curriculum changes. The school based training of educators should not be seen as short courses or workshops done for the educators, only to be left without a continuous support and guidance. It should be noted that school based educators are part of the community of learners with the shared purpose of ensuring quality learning experiences of all learners, every day, without exception and this is reinforced by the following goals: -- Providing of all school personnel with opportunity of further developing, and enriching their professional skills and knowledge. -- Challenging all school personnel to examine their attitudes and beliefs regarding the capacity of all students at high level, as well as their accountability for continuous improvement in student performance (Fer, 2005:2). The problem is how to cultivate the culture of school based continuous training and participation of all educators in the programmes. The Employment of Educators Act offers enormous possibilities for educators’ professional development. The principal is tasked with the responsibility of establishing staff development progammes, both school based, school focused and externally directed (Personnel Administrative Measures (PAM) of 1998, as determined by the Minister of Education in terms of the Employment of Educators Act, 1998). It also stress that curriculum delivery is the basic of training in order to effect changes. This study draws a distinction between short courses and workshops, and continuous professional development. Short courses is about training educators for about three to five days and leave the on their own. Continuous professional development means training educators on regular bases with follow ups after thereafter. Finally, principals and School Management Teams should ensure that there school based professional development programmes are established at schools and all educators should participate to ensure appropriate curriculum delivery. / Dissertation (MEd (Leadership))--University of Pretoria, 2007. / Education Management and Policy Studies / MEd / unrestricted

The transition from apartheid to democracy in South Africa, which began in 1994 led to a change in a plethora of policies and/or legislation. In recent years there has been much debate on how the standard of education provisioning in schools could be raised in the light of the introduction of the much debated Revised National Curriculum Statement (RNCS) and thereafter the National Curriculum Statement (NCS). These reform initiatives have brought about confusion and a sense of unsettledness amongst educators, including principals as well as their School Management Teams. Furthermore, the abovementioned and other policies required educators to acquaint themselves with either the materials that are used or the content of the curriculum and the planning and presentation of lessons. This entails in some occasions that educators who are more experienced have to assist the less experienced ones since they understand the RNCS and more recently the NCS better than the others. According to me this emphasises the importance of educator development towards raising the standards in schools. Continuous Professional Development (CPD) is a process that fits the role of an educator as a lifelong learner. The aforementioned is captured in the Norms and Standards for Educators (2000). The need for more attention to be accorded to the professional development of practising educators is emphasised in the Report of the Ministerial Committee on Teacher Education (2005). This report led to the development of the National Policy Framework for Teacher Education and Development which has as its aim to attempt to address the need for suitably qualified educators in South Africa. The National Policy Framework for Teacher Education and Development will be used in this study along with the Integrated Quality Management Systems (IQMS) as tools to achieve the continuous development of educators in South African schools. The Personnel Administration Measures (PAM) of 1999 are also used since they stipulate the roles and responsibilities of the educator, including those of the principal, deputy principal(s) as well as the heads of department. In particular it stipulates that the principal (Department of Education, 1999:10) is responsible for the development of staff training programmes, school-based, school-focused and externally directed, and to assist educators, particularly new and inexperienced educators, in developing and achieving educational objectives in accordance with the needs of the school. This research project deals with the challenges experienced by educators regarding their own Continued Professional Development (CPD). It thus aims at coming up with an empirical account of the challenges experienced by the said educators. The study will focus on, among others, the educators’ experiences in the implementation of the IQMS as a developmental tool for educators in schools. It looks at the roles that different staff members in senior positions in terms of the CPD of the educators. These include the developmental opportunities available in the sampled schools. Carefully selected and drafted interview questions assisted me in soliciting answers from the sampled educators. / Dissertation (MEd)--University of Pretoria, 2010. / Education Management and Policy Studies / unrestricted

Managing a software project is an increasingly complex task as the demands on the final product increase. Competitive environment in software industry and customer needs require software developers to increasingly concern themselves with user satisfaction as a measure of quality of the final product. Therefore, e ective management is required from project design up to software maintenance. The development team is one of the most relevant resources for the success of projects, but it is also where the greatest problems are found. Using metrics is a way to help the project team to achieve its goals and objectives. The goal of this work was to use software metrics to evaluate teams and and their members in order to analyze current performance of developers. To reach this objective, literature review and case study were applied as research instruments. The literature review allowed to discover reference values for the applied metrics in order to establish criteria that served as a basis to evaluate the software involved in the research. After obtaining this knowledge, the case study was applied to two local public companies and undergraduate students from two universities. In total, thirteen softwares were evaluated, four of which were developed in companies and nine by students. A tool was selected to collect software metrics automatically and to provide the result in a format ready to be manipulated. As a result, it was verified that the evaluation of software quality by means of metrics contributes to project management, because it indicates its failures and where it should be improved. Evidence has also been discovered that using collected software metrics is useful in evaluating development team members. By means of the case study, it was discovered that team composition is important to the success of the project, and that training and experience of the members directly a ect quality of software. When analyzing the software through metrics, it was observed that the best performance was achieved by developers with more advanced training and more near experience time. In this sense, software metrics can contribute to follow both the development of the project and the decisions that cause changes in the team. / Gerenciar um projeto de software é uma tarefa cada vez mais complexa à medida que as exigências sobre o produto final aumentam. O ambiente competitivo no mercado de software e as necessidades dos clientes exigem que os desenvolvedores de software tenham preocupação cada vez maior na satisfação do usuário como uma medida da qualidade do produto final. Assim, é preciso um gerenciamento eficaz desde a concepção do projeto até a manutenção do software. A equipe de desenvolvimento é um dos recursos mais relevantes para o êxito dos projetos, mas também é onde frequentemente são encontrados os maiores problemas. O uso de métricas é uma forma de ajudar a equipe do projeto a atingir os seus objetivos e metas. O objetivo deste trabalho foi utilizar métricas de software para avaliar equipes e seus membros, analisando o desempenho atual dos desenvolvedores. Para atingir esse objetivo, nesse trabalho foram aplicados como instrumentos de pesquisa a revisão da literatura e o estudo de caso. A revisão da literatura propiciou descobrir valores referência para as métricas aplicadas, com a finalidade de estabelecer critérios que serviram de base para avaliar os softwares envolvidos na pesquisa. Após obter esses conhecimentos, foi aplicado o estudo de caso em duas empresas públicas locais e em exercícios com alunos de graduação de duas universidades. No total, foram avaliados treze softwares, sendo quatro desenvolvidos nas empresas e nove pelos estudantes. Para a aplicação das métricas, foi selecionada uma ferramenta que as coletasse automaticamente e fornecesse o resultado em um formato pronto para ser manipulado. Como resultado, foi constatado que a avaliação da qualidade do software por meio de métricas contribui na gestão de projetos, pois indica suas falhas e onde deve ser melhorado. Também foram descobertas evidências de que o uso de métricas é útil na avaliação dos membros das equipes de desenvolvimento. Por meio do estudo de caso, descobriu-se que a composição da equipe é importante para o sucesso do projeto, pois a formação e experiência dos membros afetam diretamente a qualidade do software. Ao analisar os softwares por meio de métricas, foi observado que o melhor desempenho foi alcançado por desenvolvedores com capacitação em andamento e tempo mais próximo de experiência . Neste sentido, as métricas de software podem contribuir para acompanhar tanto o desenvolvimento do projeto quanto nas decisões que causam mudanças na equipe.