Thesis (MScIng)--University of Stellenbosch, 2007. / Bibliography.

The purpose of this study is to examine the three scheduling systems available today as a management tool. The first two systems--Milestone Reporting and Line-of-Balance--are essentially Gantt charts which do not appear to meet the requirements for management control of scheduling. An investigation of PERT is made to see if it will provide additional controls necessary for proper scheduling.

<p>This research was initiated due to the novelty of the topic. Humor is a common phenomenon in the daily interaction of many people; however this study is particularly interested in humor as used by managers. As a preconception to the study it was assumed that appropriately used humor results in benefits for a leader, thus we wish to explore how managers in Swedish organizations reason about <em>if</em> and <em>how</em> humor can be used as a management tool. For this purpose we employed qualitative research with semi-structured interviewing method. The subjects for investigation reside in Umeå, northern Swedish town, and are leaders in 8 medium/big sized, private, service companies.</p><p>The findings of this research suggest that managers often do realize the benefits of using humor and even consider it as a management tool. Our findings furthermore illustrate that the utility of humor to achieve the desired organizational outcomes of reduced stress, group cohesiveness, improved communication, creativity and leadership effectiveness is in fact very situation dependent.  We could also see that our respondents tended to attribute the use of humor to their natural skills as they reason that they rarely use humor on purpose. Interestingly though, our findings showed both that managers were aware of the effects of humor and that they often utilized the benefits of humor. We therefore conclude that humor thus instead is consciously used as the managers often clearly are aware of the beneficial effects that humor brings. However, we do believe that it could be difficult to state to what extent one implements the benefits of humor in practice since humor is, as mentioned by the majority of our respondents, simply a part of their personality.</p><p>We think that one of the most important things that this study can contribute with would be to inform the reader that it is acceptable and OK to use humor also as a manager or a leader. People do not have to be less serious or effective because they have fun at work. On the contrary there are instead many benefits with humor that our research shows and if implemented, humor could contribute to make the workplace more pleasant.</p>

This research was initiated due to the novelty of the topic. Humor is a common phenomenon in the daily interaction of many people; however this study is particularly interested in humor as used by managers. As a preconception to the study it was assumed that appropriately used humor results in benefits for a leader, thus we wish to explore how managers in Swedish organizations reason about if and how humor can be used as a management tool. For this purpose we employed qualitative research with semi-structured interviewing method. The subjects for investigation reside in Umeå, northern Swedish town, and are leaders in 8 medium/big sized, private, service companies. The findings of this research suggest that managers often do realize the benefits of using humor and even consider it as a management tool. Our findings furthermore illustrate that the utility of humor to achieve the desired organizational outcomes of reduced stress, group cohesiveness, improved communication, creativity and leadership effectiveness is in fact very situation dependent.  We could also see that our respondents tended to attribute the use of humor to their natural skills as they reason that they rarely use humor on purpose. Interestingly though, our findings showed both that managers were aware of the effects of humor and that they often utilized the benefits of humor. We therefore conclude that humor thus instead is consciously used as the managers often clearly are aware of the beneficial effects that humor brings. However, we do believe that it could be difficult to state to what extent one implements the benefits of humor in practice since humor is, as mentioned by the majority of our respondents, simply a part of their personality. We think that one of the most important things that this study can contribute with would be to inform the reader that it is acceptable and OK to use humor also as a manager or a leader. People do not have to be less serious or effective because they have fun at work. On the contrary there are instead many benefits with humor that our research shows and if implemented, humor could contribute to make the workplace more pleasant.

Introduction: As information technology has been developing so rapidly, it affects all business processes. Project management is also greatly affected, as organizations world-wide constantly strive for competitive advantage, major tools were produced and manage-ment control of project progress throughout their lifecycle is becoming increasingly recog-nized for its importance. Problem: The study of software project management tools has aroused a great deal of in-terest in modern research circles as well as inspired extensive research in the area of mana-gerial science. However, there still seems to be confusion, disagreement and limited re-search regarding these concepts of job performance. Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to examine, how project management tools can af-fect the efficiency in a software development project. Efficiency will be measured by time, from project start to finish, human and financial resources. Method: An electronic qualitative and partly quantitative questionnaires were sent to three sampled companies. In each company one Web programmer, one project manager and one executive level employee had filled out the questionnaires. The acquired data was then ana-lysed in relation to the frame of reference. Frame of Reference: Theoretical framework is build on a literature within software pro-ject management field, Iron/Golden Triangle, Productivity Paradox, Technology Accep-tance Model, and Software Project Management. Conclusion: To conclude the results of the study, after analyzing the data gathered from various companies implementing JIRA has in all cases resulted in increased product quality, more efficient and faster communication, as well as lower product development costs. This means that implementing JIRA can be beneficial for time, money and quality of software development.

<p> The experience shows that any shortcoming in defining the requirements for computer based systems imperils the deliverables of all the subsequent stages of their development. This importance is undeniable when dealing with manufacturing software-systems due to their significant role in all spheres of human life. These systems have very stringent non-functional requirements such as accuracy and real-time constraints. The development of manufacturing software-systems is very challenging and requires special caution, since any mistake might have broad impact on very expensive work-pieces or might lead to a machining accident with irreparable effects. The success of their development depends largely on the quality of their Software Requirements Specification Document (SRSD).</p> <p> We propose a new requirements template specifically designed for manufacturing systems. The template is structured to reflect their characteristics including multi-constraints and multi-disciplinary problems, multi-stage processes, multi-tasking, dynamic behavior, evolutionary nature, time-varying physical characteristics, and the usage of complex scientific models. A complementary usage of goal-driven, viewpoint oriented, and scenario-based approach is adopted for structuring the template content. To provide a high quality SRSD, the template is designed to enhance unambiguity, consistency, completeness, precision, non-redundancy, and good organization of the requirements document as well as other criteria including breadth of applicability and methodology independence.</p> <p> An automated tool for requirements management according to the proposed template has been designed and implemented. The requirements management tool provides relatively secure and easy-to-use capabilities for the documentation and the retrieval of the requirements. It accelerates capturing the requirements, improves system quality by enhancing the reduction of requirements errors, and helps in establishing a common understanding between the system builders and the stakeholders. In addition to a user friendly environment for changing the information, we developed a powerful dynamic report generator that can be configured by the user and that provides a simple way for retrieving the requirements and formatting them.</p> <p> Both the template and the tool have been validated using the requirements for a Tool Trajectory Planning for High Speed Machining system developed at the Aerospace Manufacturing Technology Centre, Institute for Aerospace Research (Montreal).</p> / Thesis / Master of Science (MSc)

Due to new regulation GDPR, a whole industry had to change its way of handling data. This industry is the test data management industry, an industry that bases its products on managing PII (Personally Identifiable Information). This leads to an increased demand to how data is stored, which by its own leads to different solutions and several companies that try their chances to establish themselves in this market. The overall purpose of this study is to extract the good and bad aspects from five different test data management tools. In addition to the collection of fact, tests are performed to gain experience with each program to later summarize them both. The result consists of the result from the test cases and the result from the comparison matrix and together they form the grade on the test data management tool. The conclusion that can be drawn from this mapping is that the programs with the highest flexibility have a greater chance of success, but there are also simple programs that show that simplicity is at least as important. / På grund av den nya förordningen GDPR var en hel bransch tvungen att ändra sitt sätt att hantera data på. Denna bransch är testdatahanteringen, en bransch som baserar sina produkter på att hantera PII (Personally Identifiable Information). Detta leder till ett ökat krav på hur data förvaras leder till olika lösningar och flera företag som tar chansen att etablera sig i marknaden. Det övergripande syftet i denna undersökning är att ta fram de positiva och negativa aspekterna ur fem olika testdatahanterare. Utöver bara faktainsamling utförs tester för att få erfarenhet med varje program och därefter sammanfatta åsikterna med konkreta fakta. Resultatet består av resultatet från testfallen och resultatet från jämförelsematrisen och tillsammans bildar de ett betyg på testdatahanteringsverktyget. Den slutsats som kan dras från denna kartläggning är att de program med högst flexibilitet har större chans att lyckas men även finns det enkla program som visar att simpelhet är minst lika viktigt.

The outburst of the application industry leading to the creation of com-plex applications serves as the need for a proactive approach to the implementation and monitoring of applications. Application Life-cycle Management (ALM) thus provides a conceptual framework with pre-defined steps that can help organizations successfully deploy their IT applications and adapt them to meet their changes in business needs. SAP Solution Manager is one of such ALM tools that is widely used by SAP Customers to manage their entire IT landscape, for cross-integration of application platforms thereby securing Return On Investment (ROI). The primary aim of this report is to investigate SAP Solution Manager as an Application Life-cycle Management tool, bringing out its potentials benefits and pre-senting challenges encountered by its users thus far.

Bakgrund Benchmarking är ett populärt styrverktyg men studierhar visat att benchmarking inte anses som ett likaeffektivt förbättringsverktyg som andra styrverktyg,vilka kritiska faktorer som ligger bakom enframgånsrik benchmarking bör då undersökas. Efter en genomgång av tidigare studier fann vi dessutom attbrister finns gällande vetskapen hur användandet avintern benchmarking upplevs. Få studier har gjortsinom detaljhandeln där intern benchmarking tycksvara användbart. Syfte Syftet med studien är att få en större kunskap kringupplevelserna av intern benchmarking inomdetaljhandeln. Studien syftar även till att redogöra förvad det är som ligger bakom en framgångsrik internbenchmarking. Frågeställningar Hur upplevs intern benchmarking inom detaljhandeln? Vilka är de kritiska faktorerna för framgångsrik internbenchmarking? Metod Studien utgörs av en kvalitativ ansats bestående av 2 intervjuer med företagsledning och 5 intervjuer medvaruhuschefer. Studien har även en kvantitativ delsom består av en enkätundersökning med enpopulation på 75 personer. Slutsats Studiens slutsats är att intern benchmarking upplevs som motiverande, stimulerande, användbart i dendagliga verksamheten samt ökar förståelsen förorganisationen. Kritiska faktorer bakom enframgångsrik intern benchmarkingprocess är en tydlig process, utbildning, tillgång till data, ett bra forum förkommunikation och högt deltagande av anställda. / Background Benchmarking is a popular managament tool butstudies have shown that benchmarking is notconsidered as an effective management tool as othermanagement tools, what the critical factors behind asuccessful internal benchmarking should therefore belooked into further. We also found, after reviewingformer studies, that there are lack of informationabout the experience of using internal benchmarking. Only a few studies have been done in retail whereinternal benchmarking seems useful. Aim The aim with the studie is to get more knowledgeabout the experiences of internal benchmarking inretail. The study also aims to state the critical factorsbehind a successful internal benchmarking. Research questions What is the experience of internal benchmarking inretail? What are the critical factors behind a successfulinternal benchmarking? Methodology The study has a qualitative approach and consists of 2 interviews with management and 5 interviews withstore managers. The studie also has an quantitativeapproach that consists of a survey with a populationof 75 people. Conclusion The conclusion of the study is that internalbenchmarking are experienced as motivating,stimulating, useful in the daily business and alsoincreases the understanding of the organization. Critical factors behind succescfull internalbenchmarking process are a clear process, education,access of data, a good forum for communication andhigh participation rate of the employees.

Este trabalho tem por objetivo investigar o uso da tecnologia para apoiar a colaboração com vistas à aprendizagem. Considera-se que a colaboração, à luz da abordagem sociointeracionista de Vygotksy, constitui-se em elemento essencial para que alunos desenvolvam habilidades fundamentais tais como autonomia, capacidade de argumentação, pensamento crítico e reflexão. Para que ocorra colaboração em um grupo de estudantes, é necessário que haja mecanismos de coordenação que organizem este processo. Investigou-se de que forma ferramentas de gerência de projetos, comumente encontradas em softwares utilizados no mundo do trabalho, podem favorecer a coordenação da aprendizagem colaborativa. Foi conduzida uma pesquisa baseada em design, com dois estudos de caso em sala de aula e implementação de solução. Ao longo da investigação, foi definido um modelo de coordenação compatível com os pressupostos teóricos da aprendizagem colaborativa e com os elementos existentes nos gerenciadores de projeto. Os achados da investigação apontam para a conclusão de que é possível fazer uso de gerenciadores de projetos para apoiar aprendizagem colaborativa sob determinadas condições. Concluiu-se que a transposição deste tipo de ferramenta do mundo do trabalho para o contexto educacional exige mudança na forma de utilização. Por esta razão, foi definido um novo modelo de coordenação da colaboração. Ao contrário de grande parte dos pesquisadores que fazem uso de scripts de colaboração pré-determinados, tal modelo baseia-se na participação ativa dos alunos na construção de esquemas de colaboração adequados às mais diversas situações. O primeiro estudo de caso, realizado com um gerenciador de projetos de domínio público, demonstrou a viabilidade da utilização deste tipo de ferramenta sob um novo modelo de coordenação, mas apontou a necessidade de adaptações. Os dados obtidos permitiram o desenvolvimento de um gerenciador de projetos mais adequado ao ambiente educacional. O segundo estudo de caso, realizado com o novo software, permitiu identificar a viabilidade de se utilizarem gerenciadores de projetos para a coordenação da aprendizagem colaborativa, adotando-se um modelo de coordenação que permite a definição de modelos de colaboração adequados a diferentes circunstâncias. / The present study investigates the usage of technology to support collaboration as a learning activity. Following Vygotsky theories, collaboration is considered essential in the development of student skills like autonomy, reasoning, critical thinking and reflection. Without coordination mechanisms, groups of students do not collaborate. We investigated how project management tools, usually found in corporate environments, could benefit the coordination of collaborative learning. A design-based research, which includes two case studies and software development, was carried out. Throughout the investigation, a coordination model compatible with the theoretical assumptions of collaborative learning and the elements in the existing project managers was defined. The research findings indicated that it is possible to use project management tools in order to support collaborative learning under certain conditions. The migration of such tools from work context to educational context demands a change in its usage. For that reason, a new coordination model was defined. Unlike most of the researchers, who use pre-defined scripts, this model is based on the active participation of students in building collaborative schemes appropriate to different situations. The first case study, conducted with a public domain manager, demonstrated that it is viable to use this type of software under a new paradigm, but pointed some necessary adjustments. The obtained data allowed building a new project manager, more adequate to educational environment. The second case study, carried out with the new software, conclude that it is possible to use project management tools in order to support coordination of collaborative learning, adopting a coordination model which allows the definition of collaboration models that fit different situations.