Automated software test execution is a critical part of the modern software development process, where rapid feedback on the product quality is expected. It is of high importance that impediments related to test execution automation are prevented and removed as quickly as possible. An enabling factor for all types of improvement is to understand the nature of what is to be improved. The goal with this thesis is to further the knowledge about common problems encountered by software developers using test execution automation, in order to enable improvement of test execution automation in industrial software development. The research has been performed through industrial case studies and literature reviews. The analysis of the data have primarily been performed using qualitative methods, searching for patterns, themes, and concepts in the data.  Our main findings include: (a) a comprehensive list of potential impediments reported in the published body of knowledge on test execution automation, (b) an in-depth analysis of how such impediments may affect the performance of a development team, and (c) a proposal for a qualitative model of interactions between the main groups of phenomena that contribute to the formation of impediments in a test execution automation project. In addition to this, we contribute qualitative and quantitative empirical data from our industrial case studies.  Through our results, we find that test execution automation is a commonly under-estimated activity,  not only in terms of resources but also in terms of the complexity of the work. There is a clear tendency to perform the work ad hoc, down-prioritize the automation in favor of other activities,  and ignore the long-term effects in favor of short-term gains. This is both a technical and a cultural problem that need to be managed by awareness of the problems that may arise, and also have to be solved in the long term through education and information. We conclude by proposing a theoretical model of the socio-technical system that needs to be managed to be successful with test execution automation. / Syftet med denna avhandling är att utöka den vetenskapliga kunskapen om problem som kan uppstå under användning av automatiserad testning i industriell programvaruutveckling. Utveckling av programvara består principiellt av ett antal processteg: kravbehandling, detaljerad systemkonstruktion, implementation i form av programmering, och slutligen testning som säkerställer att kvaliteten på programvaran är tillräcklig för dess tilltänkta användare. Testning representerar en stor del av tiden och kostnaden för utveckling av programvaran, och detta gör att det är attraktivt att automatisera testningen. Automatiserade tester kan bidra med många positiva effekter. Testning som utförs om och om igen, för att säkerställa att gammal funktionalitet inte slutar att fungera när ändringar görs i programvaran, kan med fördel göras automatiserat. Detta frigör kvalificerad personal till kvalificerat arbete. Automatisering kan även minska ledtiden för testningen och därmed möjliggöra snabbare leveranser till kund. Ett annat mål med testautomatisering är att vara säker på att samma tester utförs på ett likartat sätt varje gång produkten testas, så att den håller en jämn och stabil kvalitetsnivå. Automatiserad testning är dock en mer komplex och kostsam verksamhet än vad man kan tro, och problem som uppstår under dess användning kan ha stora konsekvenser. Detta gäller i ännu större utsträckning i organisationer som använder moderna utvecklingsmetoder där automatisering är grundstenen för en effektiv kvalitetskontroll. För att kunna undvika så många problem som möjligt, är det därför mycket viktigt att förstå vad som händer när man använder testautomatisering i stor skala. Denna avhandling presenterar resultat från fallstudier i svensk industri, som, kombinerat med en systematisk genomgång av befintlig forskning inom området, har utförts för att söka djupare kunskap och möjligheter till generalisering. Arbetet har varit beskrivande, och förklarande, och bygger på empirisk forskningsmetodik.  I avhandlingen bidrar vi med (a) information om de problem relaterade till automatiserad testning som vi har identifierat i de empiriska fallstudierna, (b) en diskussion av dessa problem i relation till andra studier i området, (c) en systematisk litteraturstudie som ger en översikt över relevanta publikationer i området, (d) en analys av bevisen som insamlats genom litteraturstudien, samt (e) en modell av det organisatoriska och tekniska system som måste hanteras för att man skall nå framgång med ett testautomatiseringsprojekt. Resultaten tyder på att rent tekniska problem inte utgör huvuddelen av de problem som upplevs med testautomatisering. Istället handlar det till stora delar om organisationell dynamik: hantering av förändringen det innebär att införa automatisering, planering av automatisering och dess användning, samt vilka finansiella förväntningar man har på automatiseringen. / ITS-EASY Post Graduate School for Embedded Software and Systems

Företagsforskarskolor syftar till att kunskaps- och kompetensnivån i näringslivet skall höjas och högskolan tillföras kunskap och erfarenheter från näringslivet. Detta är tänkt att ske genom en utvidgad handledning, bestående av både en akademisk handledare och en industrihandledare, vidare ett avhandlingsprojekt som är av intresse för företaget och dessutom genom att företagsdoktoranderna parallellt med sin utbildning till viss del arbetar inom ett företag. Doktorsavhandlingens övergripande syfte är att, genom empiriska undersökningar, få insikt i och förståelse för företagsdoktoranders situation, i vilken handledningen är en central del. Avhandlingens mer specifika syften är att beskriva doktorandernas perspektiv, upplevelser och erfarenheter av sitt deltagande i olika praktiker, parallellt med sin identitetsutveckling till forskare inom ramen för forskarutbildningsprocessen. Av särskilt intresse är att undersöka och belysa de i undersökningarna identifierade framgångsfaktorerna och hindren i termer av förutsättningar samt behov av anpassning till företagsdoktoranders särskilda situation, där samarbetet inom handledningen är en faktor. För att uppnå dessa syften intervjuades år 2001 och år 2004 ett anta  doktorander antagna till fyra olika företagsforskarskolor och några av deras handledare. Stora variationer beroende på företagsmiljö och forskarskoletillhörighet framkommer när det gäller upplevelserna av att vara företagsdoktorand. Detsamma gäller doktorandernas identifikation och deltagande, som resulterar i olika lärsystem med avseende på både dimension och karaktär. Även handledarsamarbetet kring doktoranden varierar och olika handledarkaraktärer framträder. De stora variationerna beror på faktorer som kan hänföras till företagsmiljön, doktorandernas inträde i forskarskolan, avhandlingsprojektet, forskarskoleorganisationen, handledningen och doktorandernas förväntningar inför framtiden. De flesta av dessa faktorer, liksom lärsystemens olika utformning, synliggörs med hjälp av teorier och begrepp inom situerat lärande. Det gör däremot inte de påverkansfaktorer som identifieras och som kan relateras antingen till övergripande strukturer och makt eller till motsättningar mellan olika kunskapsbildningsformer och verksamhets- och lärandelogiker.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hawaii at Manoa, 1994. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 375-391). / Microfiche. / 2 v. (xix, 391 leaves, bound) ill. 29 cm

Geomagnetically induced currents (GICs), resulting from adverse space weather, have been demonstrated to cause damage to power transformers at mid-latitudes. There is growing concern over possible GIC effects in the Southern African network due to its long power lines. Previous efforts to model the electric field associated with GICs in the Southern Africa region used a uniform ground conductivity model. In an effort to improve the modelling of GICs, GIC data together with Hermanus Magnetic Observatory geomagnetic field data were used to obtain a multilayered ground conductivity model. This process requires a definition of the network coefficients, which are then used in subsequent calculations. This study shows that GIC computed with the new network coefficients and the multilayered ground conductivity model improves the accuracy of GIC modelling. Then GIC statistics are derived based on the recordings of the geomagnetic field at Hermanus, the new network coefficients and ground conductivity model. The geoelectric field is modelled using the plane wave method. The properties of the geomagnetic field, their time derivatives and local geomagnetic indices were investigated to determine their characteristics in relation to the GIC. The pattern of the time derivatives of the horizontal geomagnetic field closely follow the rate of change of the north-south geomagnetic component rather than the east-west component. The correlation between the GIC and the local geomagnetic field indices was also investigated. The results show that there is a higher correlation between the GIC and the east-west components of the geomagnetic local indices than between the GIC and the north-south components. This corresponds very well with the orientation of the power lines feeding the power transformers at the South African Grassridge electrical substation GIC site. Thus, the geoelectric field driving the GIC at Grassridge is north-south oriented. Further, it is shown that the geomagnetic observation sites have a strong directional preference with respect to the Grassridge GIC site.

Pavement layers are constructed using a combination of materials, of which rock aggregates constitute a larger proportion. Current understanding is that the performance of pavements is dependent on the aggregate shape properties which include form, angularity and surface texture. However, direct and accurate measurements of aggregate shape properties remain a challenge. The current standard test methods used to evaluate aggregate shape properties cannot measure these properties accurately. Among the reasons contributing to the difficulties in the determination of aggregate shape properties is irregular shapes of aggregate particles. Therefore, current research efforts focus on developing accurate, reliable and innovative techniques for evaluation of aggregate shape properties. The work presented in this dissertation contributes to the current innovative research at the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) in South Africa, to automate the measurement of aggregate shape properties. The CSIR’s present research is aimed at improving pavement performance through better materials characterisation, using laser scanning and advanced modelling techniques. The objective of this study was to investigate improved techniques for the determination of aggregate shape properties using analytical and laser scanning techniques. A three-dimensional (3-D) laser scanning device was used for scanning six types of aggregate samples commonly used for construction of pavements in South Africa. The laser scan data were processed to reconstruct 3-D models of the aggregate particles. The models were further analysed to determine the shape properties of the aggregates. Two analysis approaches were used in this study. The first approach used the aggregate’s physical properties (surface area, volume and orthogonal dimensions) measured by using laser scanning technique to compute three different indices to describe the form of aggregates. The computed indices were the sphericity computed by using surface area and volume of an aggregate particle, the sphericity computed by using orthogonal dimensions of an aggregate particle, and the flat and elongated ratio computed by using longest and smallest dimensions of an aggregate particle. The second approach employed a spherical harmonic analysis technique to analyse the aggregate laser scan data to determine aggregate form, angularity and surface texture indices. A MATLABTM code was developed for analysis of laser scan data, using the spherical harmonic analysis technique. The analyses contained in this dissertation indicate that the laser-based aggregate shape indices were able to describe the shape properties of the aggregates studied. Furthermore, good correlations were observed between the spherical harmonic form indices and the form indices determined by using the aggregate’s physical properties. This shows that aggregate laser scanning is a versatile technique for the determination of various indices to describe aggregate shape properties. Further validation of the laser-based technique was achieved by correlating the laser-based aggregate form indices with the results from two current standard tests; the flakiness index and the flat and elongated particles ratio tests. The laser-based form indices correlated linearly with both, the flakiness index and the flat and elongated particles ratio test results. The observed correlations provide an indication of the validity of laser-based aggregate shape indices. It is concluded that the laser based scanning technique could be employed for direct and accurate determination of aggregate shape properties. / Dissertation (MEng)--University of Pretoria, 2013. / gm2013 / Civil Engineering / Unrestricted

Several studies have shown that the main problem in the construction industry is low productivity. Therefore, this study focuses on developing a proposal through a methodology that can increase productivity in the construction of buildings. The proposed methodology is Virtual Design and Construction (VDC), which has 4 pillars: Building Information Modeling (BIM), Integrated Concurrent Engineering (ICE), metrics and Project Production Management (PPM). However, the article mainly develops BIM and ICE sessions. In addition, in the ICE sessions, "work executors"will be added, so that the information is fed back by both parties, specialist engineers and work executors. Finally, the proposal will be applied in a multi-family building project in the city of Lima - Peru, in order to obtain improvement results.

This thesis examines the theoretical premises of and ways that macro deliberative approaches to decision making function in application to specific instances of science and technology governance. Macro-level deliberations constitute complex, extended, distributed decision making processes, in contrast to individual micro deliberation exercises undertaken in particular settings. Macro deliberations employ the mechanism of ‘division of labour' in terms of actors, tasks and methods in order to secure the two essential qualities of ‘inclusiveness' and ‘deliberativeness' – thus resolving the inherent tension between number of participants and deep discussion. Accordingly, the thesis focuses on the ways in which this paradoxical mechanism of ‘inclusion by division' functions in macro deliberations. An interrogation of two UK nationwide public deliberation cases – GM Dialogue (on GM crops) and the CoRWM process (on radioactive waste) – sheds light on the significant role of reflexivity in such macro deliberative approaches to decision making. The thesis adopts a triangulated approach towards both documents and interviews employing contending representations to cross-check the one with the other. In considering the ways in which reflexivity constitutes a critical quality of the process and outcome of division of labour in macro deliberations, the thesis argues that the notion of reflexivity is central to explaining how macro deliberation functions: The reflective and self-contingent feature of reflexivity enables participants to explore diverse rationales on division of labour through continuous generation of new rationales; this recursive self-reconfiguration process of rationales on division of labour entails an evolutionary development of division of labour. As division of labour is played out not in a static, exogenous fashion, but through a dynamic, endogenous construction process, reflexivity in real-world macro deliberations illuminates some significant contrasts in the ways that ‘deliberation' and ‘inclusion' take place to those characterised in theory. Indeed, deliberation emerges in practice as more than just open rational dialogue. In order to understand this more fully, it must be seen in terms of diversity of material, social and political interactions, and relationships – referred to here as ‘discursive relations'. In reality, then, inclusion occurs in more emergent ways than intended by design, rather, unfolding as participants engage with each other. In this way, actors' divergent views are cross-reflected and mutually influence each other, not through theoretically-envisaged top-down aggregation but via a kind of endogenous ‘fermentation' process. In this way, reflexivity actually makes macro public deliberation a more effectively inclusive and deliberative decision making process. In short, recognition of this inherent reflexivity in macro deliberations offers practically to aid improved understanding of the complex process of engagement in science and technology governance. It suggests that we would benefit from shifting our attention somewhat away from the direct provision of strictly prescriptive design protocols towards the construction of better general environments for facilitating more reflexivity, which should enable actors to shape their own reflexive deliberation. Then let them brew!

Thesis (M. Eng.)--Carleton University, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 76-87). Also available in electronic format on the Internet.

Orientadores: Sergio Robles Reis de Queiroz, Maria da Graça Derengowski Fonseca / Tese (doutorado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de Geociencias / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-04T05:28:41Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Vieira_VeraMariadaMotta_D.pdf: 8655703 bytes, checksum: ebf225afb7dd4bd1ec639d20a21132e6 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2005 / Resumo: A inovação em produtos e processos é reconhecida como fundamental para a competitividade das empresas e dos países e parece depender de um conjunto de fatores que vão além da capacidade tecnológica (ou mudança técnica). Utilizando-se como referência teorias e estruturas analíticas recentes da literatura sobre o desenvolvimento e acumulação de competências e processos de aprendizagem, investiga-se as competências para inovar na indústria farmacêutica, especialmente as competências tecnológicas, organizacionais, relacionais, dos meios e produtivas. Tomando como modelo o "ciclo do medicamento inovador" através da rota de síntese química, analisam-se as competências envolvidas no processo de trazer à comercialização um novo medicamento. Descrevem-se os estágios tecnológicos, a cadeia produtiva, a curva de valor e a evolução das tecnologias na experimentação farmacêutica, assim como as principais transformações que vêm ocorrendo nesta indústria na atualidade e no contexto internacional e nacional. Tal referencial é aplicado ao estudo de caso da Fundação Oswaldo Cruz Fiocruz, a maior instituição de C&T em saúde da América Latina e de seu Instituto de Tecnologia em Fánnacos - Far-Manguinhos, laboratório produtor integrante da rede oficial e o único ligado ao Ministério da Saúde do Brasil. Como resultado da pesquisa, identifica-se a trajetória institucional e tecnológica da Fiocruz em medicamentos e o salto gerencial e tecnológico de Far-Manguinhos, realizado em pouco mais de duas décadas. O aprendizado tecnológico realizado através de engenharia reversa de anti-retrovirais (cópia) proporcionou ao Ministério da Saúde de promover maior acesso aos medicamentos à população através de Programas Estratégicos de Saúde Pública, como o da AIDS, trazendo economias substanciais de divisas e maior efetividade no combate às doenças no País. Constatou-se estarem instaladas na Fiocruz grande parte das competências para inovar, mas estas não estão integradas a ponto de fazer emergir uma inovação radical (fármaco ou medicamento inovador) / Abstract: Product and process innovation is acknowledged as crucial for the competitiveness of countries and firms and seems to depend on a conjunction of factors that go far beyond the stricttechnologica1 capabi1ity (or technical change). This study has as its purpose to understand and describe the competencies that are essential to arrive at innovation in the pharmaceutical industry - specially technological, organizational, relational, productive and of means - having as a basic framework analytical structures that were recent1y developed in the literature as to the development and accumulation of competences and learning processes. In trying to ana1yze the competencies necessary 50 that a new chemical entity and a new drug reaches the market one has used a model that could be called "new drug discovery, development and commercialization cycle" as well as the chemical synthesis route. In so doing, one has described technological steps or stages, the chain of production, the value curve and the evolution of the technologies in pharmaceutical experimentation, as well as the main changes that have been occurring in this industry nowadays. The thesis studies the case of Fundação Oswaldo Cruz - Brasil (Oswaldo Cruz Foundation-Brazil), an institution devoted to Science and Technology in Hea1th that is sui generis in the Brazilian pharmaceutical environment and of its re1atedPharmaceutica1 Technology Institute- Far-Manguinhos, a public laboratory that fabricates drugs as a member of the official network (the on1y laboratory with this status) of the Ministry of Health in Brazil. As a result of the study, one describes the technological and institutional trajectory of Far-Manguinhos and a1so how the institution has arrive data technologica1 and managerial leapfrogging -in over little more than two decades. This technological learning process was made through the process of reversa1 engineering (a copy) of anti-retrovirals - thus giving conditions to the Ministry of Health to promote strong access of the . population to essential medicines (specific strategic programs of public hea1th, such as that of AIDS, stay as an important example) and thus saving substantial foreign reserves and guaranteeing effectiveness to the fight against disease in Brazil. One has arrived at the conc1usion that at Fiocruz one can identify the most part of needed competencies to innovate but one could also see that such competencies are not particularly integrated to the point of making emerge aradica1 innovation (farmaco or innovative drug) / Doutorado / Politica Cientifica e Tecnologica / Doutor em Política Científica e Tecnológica

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / Scholars have repeatedly demonstrated the positive benefits of high-quality leader-member exchange (LMX) for employees and organizations alike. Although some research has examined outcomes of differentiation of LMX relationships within teams, there is scant research into the way in which the combination of LMX and LMX differentiation (LMX-D) interact at the leader-level in the workplace hierarchy and the trickle-down effects these leader relationships have on subordinates. Moreover, no research has examined the potential buffering effect that subordinate team LMX may have on leaders who are experiencing the desire to withdraw from the organization as a result of the combination of their leader-leader exchange (LLX) relationships and the LLX differentiation (LLX-D) they perceive on their own leader teams. Thus, the present study sought to combine LMX and multilevel leadership theories to examine the effects of these leader-level exchange relationships on turnover intentions (TOI) for both individuals in leader-member dyads. Results suggested stronger negative relationships between LLX and TOI for both leaders and members when LLX-D is lower. However, examining this relationship at the leader-level when accounting for subordinate team LMX mean suggests that high-quality LMX relationships with the team members supervised by the leader attenuates the negative relationship between LLX and leader TOI. Theoretical and practical contributions are discussed, including the importance of the relationship of LLX, LLX-D, and team LMX mean on employee attitudes at multiple organizational levels.