Business-IT alignment has been a top research topic for three decades now and consistently ranks high on CIO priorities and concerns. In spite of its seeming advantages, sustainable business-IT alignment remains elusive in practice. This can be attributed to the language and knowledge gaps which impede mutual understanding between business and IT stakeholders. It can also be attributed to the limitations imposed by approaching alignment solely from a strategic perspective. This thesis argues for an ontology-based framework that bridges the language and knowledge gaps through closer interaction between business and IT stakeholders throughout the software development and project management lifecycles, especially at the requirements engineering stage. Attempts at achieving sustainable business-IT alignment predominantly focus on strategic alignment and have not been successful for various reasons. Firstly, driving down alignment initiatives to the operational and tactical levels is challenging. Secondly, it is difficult to operationalize the metrics used for evaluating alignment maturity at strategic levels. These limitations are less pronounced at the functional levels of an organization. It is at these levels that business strategies are executed and interaction between business and IT personnel is most frequent. The interaction between business and IT stakeholders in the execution of IT projects presents an opportunity that can be leveraged to drive alignment maturity. The proposed framework is discussed in terms of its underpinning hypotheses, workflows, tool design and implementation, its use with a third party framework and tool. Antecedents to operational and tactical alignment such as quality, reuse, communication, learning, and shared understanding, are proposed as a practical means of achieving sustainable alignment maturity. The framework is applied to real world, business-critical projects in a top global financial services organization and validated using descriptive statistical analysis and structural equation modelling techniques. Contributions made through the study are highlighted. This includes the Alignment Forces Model which unifies the proposed framework and its support tool within software development and project management lifecycles. The Alignment Forces model and how it can be applied in practice is presented. Results of the quantitative data analyses indicate support for the arguments for the framework towards improving business-IT alignment, however with some limitations. Results also indicate support for the hypotheses for the antecedents to sustainable alignment maturity at lower organizational levels put forward. Finally, suggestions on furthering the study, addressing its limitations, and refining the framework and tool are articulated.

The goal of this thesis is to provide a reader with a comprehensive outlook on the cost-pricing process in a real FMCG company. Firstly, the thesis concentrates on the theoretical background of cost methodologies and pricing strategies from a perspective of a private firm. Secondly, the thesis presents a tool, which calculates the reflection of the change in the commodity cost on the shelf price of a good. Thirdly, statistical testing is applied in order to identify if the model could correlate with reality based on historical data. In this part the thesis discusses the limitations of the model and gives more real life examples of how the price is set, besides the commodity influence. Thanks to it, a reader will be able to draw conclusions from the given information and deeper understand the complexity of the FMCG market industry.

The theme of this thesis is how to implement an existing software development methodology in small company. The main aim of the thesis is to choose and adapt one of existing methodology and implement it in the real enterprise environment, therefore the first step is analyze existing (current) state in this environment and consequently propose the best way of implementing and establishing the chosen methodology. The first chapter of the thesis deals with theoretical background devoted to history of software development methodologies and explains the meaning of software development and describes its goals and parts. Existing trends in the area of software development methodologies are also described in this chapter. The next part of the thesis is focused on most widely used methodologies and approaches in this area. Some of possible methodologies for small companies are described and presented with the view of making process of selection easier. Next logical step of this work is analyzing the current state of development process of client and choosing appropriate methodology for implementation. The last chapter deals with project of implementation that consists of several steps divided into three main phases. The aim of the first phase of the project is to propose solution to establishing new methodology. It is followed by the phase implementing this solution in real enterprise environment. The project of implementation concludes with verification of results through real pilot project.

Only a small number of projects of information system development succeed. Agile methodologies have contributed to a higher level of success of specific projects developed by small teams. Nevertheless, most IT companies still refuse this approach with large-scale projects. This paper comments on the conditions that must be fulfilled for agile adoption, analyzes the limitation of such processes, and describes the approaches for the solutions of such problems with the focus on projects in a complex environment. By means of a case study, the next part of the paper shows the advantages of adopting an agile approach in a real project in a complex environment, which is in conflict with the so far presented limitations of this methodology. The project was evaluated as a success, primary, due to the implementation of the agile methodology during the development phase. This implementation helped meet all the project deadlines, accelerate bug-fixing, and especially deliver functionalities which brought an additional value to the customer. Based on the findings of the case study, the procedures and practices extending the chosen agile methodology are defined. Such procedures and practices can be used in other projects in complex environments in the future. Thus, the paper shows more options for the use of these methodologies, which may help its wider use in the future and hence increasing the success of projects focused on the development of information systems. Such situation would lead to an effective interconnectedness of ICT and business strategies, especially due to the flexible delivery of currently needed ICT services.

Agile software development methodologies these days are not used only in small enterprises or startups, they are getting spread around large enterprises as well. An evidence of this fact could be, that Scrum is nowadays the most commonly used approach to software development. So this thesis focuses on usage of agile approaches, Scrum methodology in particular, in large enterprises. Author presents an approach called Behaviour Driven development and proposes how this approach could help dealing with imperfections or barriers of Scrum when used in large enterprises. The major outcome of this thesis is author's own methodology called ScrumFlow, based on Scrum methodology and extended by Behaviour Driven Development approaches. ScrumFlow methodology is published on a website and available for free.

The master thesis focuses on effective and efficient use of supply chain management in a corporation with international scope of trade and its related risks, costs and efficiency management across the supply chain. The theoretical part includes basic foundations of the problematics, such as current trends, innovations, fundamental management strategies and the most popular methodologies used in analysing the supply chain management. The practical part of the thesis focuses on the analysis and comparison of set-ups and approaches towards efficient supply chain management among nine international corporations based on interviews with employees from each of the company. The goal of the thesis is to answer the research questions and come to a conclusion about how the companies could positively manage the problematics related to effective supply chain management.

This diploma thesis deals with the implementation of Business Intelligence in small and medium-sized companies and furthermore focuses on an agile project management and introduces possibilities for this approach. The aim of the project is to present an agile methodology of Business Intelligence implementation and comparison of processes of a real project with the procedures proposed in this methodology and eventually propose improvements. The thesis is divided into three main parts. The first part is an introduction to the theory, in which the concept of Business Intelligence is introduced and important terms as transactional and analytical systems, data warehouse, data mart, etc. are described, being followed by research of previous works focused on Business Intelligence implementation. The introduction to the theory is closed with introducing CRISP-DM methodology for SMEs and agile methodologies as Scrum and Extreme Programming. The objectives of the thesis and some sub-goals are achieved through the analysis of the agile methodology "Agile Data Warehousing for Business Intelligence implementation" in the second part of the thesis. The final main section is a comparison with a real project, in which certain improvements are also proposed for future use. The benefit of this thesis is especially the unusual view at the implementation of Business Intelligence through agile approach and proposed methods for future use in small and medium-sized companies. The benefits are also described particularly for business companies in the area of financial advice.

Para o desenvolvimento de aplicações Web de qualidade, o uso de uma abordagem sistemática e disciplinada é essencial, dado o crescente aumento do uso e da complexidade de tais aplicações. Nesse cenário, a Engenharia de Aplicações Web, ou simplesmente Engenharia Web, torna-se uma atividade mandatória. A Engenharia Web não é uma transcrição exata da Engenharia de Software, pois considera caracterí?sticas inerentes às aplicações Web como, por exemplo, multiplicidade do perfil de usuários e uso de multimídia. A Engenharia Web é apoiada por ferramentas, técnicas e métodos. A escolha desses elementos para um domínio de aplicação pode tornar-se uma tarefa difícil para desenvolvedores e demais interessados e é fundamental para o desenvolvimento efetivo de aplicações Web. Neste trabalho, é apresentado uma proposta de avaliação de métodos de desenvolvimento de aplicações Web. Essa proposta partiu de um conjunto de métodos selecionados por meio de trabalhos comparativos anteriores disponíveis na literatura e do levantamento de suas principais características, após estudo de caso que consistiu em modelar uma mesma aplicação (um portal Web) com os diferentes métodos selecionados. A cada característica associaram-se pesos, refletindo sua relevância a domínios especifícos, e valores refletindo seu grau de apoio a um método. Como resultado, obteve-se um arcabouço - conjunto de guidelines - para avaliar e/ou especificar métodos de desenvolvimento de aplicações Web. Esse arcabouço foi aplicado ao conjunto de métodos selecionados do estudo de caso e foram obtidas evidências da efetividade do arcabouço proposto / For the development of high quality Web applications, the use of a systematic and disciplined approach is essential, given the increasing use and complexity of such applications. In this scenario, the Web Applications Engineering, or simply Web Engineering, becomes a mandatory activity. The Web Engineering is not an accurate transcription of the Software Engineering. Besides incorporating its rules and lines of direction, the Web Engineering also considers inherent characteristics of Web applications such as user profiles multiplicity and multimedia resources. For the Web applications development process, the Web Engineering is supported by tools, techniques and methods. Among them, choosing appropriate elements for a given application domain may represent a challenge for interested developers. This work aims at supporting such choices through a proposal of an evaluation of current development methods for Web Applications. The proposed framework started from a set of well-known development methods found in the literature from which the main characteristics were identified by a case study consisted in modelling the same Web application by different methods. For each characteristic, weights have being associated, reflecting its relevance for specific domains, and values reflecting its degree of support to a method. As result, a framework is estabilished - set of guidelines - to evaluate and/or to specify methods of development of Web applications. This framework was applied to the set of selected methods of the case study and evidences have been provided effectiveness of the proposed framework

Actualmente existe una creciente demanda de sistemas flexibles, adaptables y con gran escalabilidad para apoyar las interacciones de personas e instituciones distribuidas en entornos heterogéneos. Esto se debe principalmente al incremento en la necesidad de trabajo colaborativo y la descentralización de los procesos en muchos dominios de aplicación. Por lo general, estas aplicaciones de software deben seguir legislaciones y normativas específicas, es decir, las entidades que participan en el sistema tienen derechos, deberes y restricciones específicas. Al igual que en otros trabajos del área, en esta tesis se utiliza el término sistemas normativos abiertos para referirse a los sistemas de este tipo. El desarrollo de sistemas normativos abiertos puede producir importantes beneficios para las compañías que los usen, ya que permiten la comunicación de instituciones, entidades heterogéneas y diferentes dispositivos con el fin de lograr tanto los objetivos globales del sistema como los individuales de cada institución y entidad. Sin embargo, también hay algunas cuestiones importantes que potencialmente pueden complicar el análisis, diseño e implementación de estos sistemas. La mayoría de estos problemas están relacionados con la interoperabilidad de sus procesos, la privacidad, la combinación de los objetivos individuales y la combinación de las restricciones y la legislación de cada una de las entidades del sistema. Por lo tanto, es necesario el uso de métodos de ingeniería del software y herramientas de desarrollo para hacer frente a estos problemas y guiar a los desarrolladores durante el proceso de desarrollo. La tecnología basada en sistemas multiagente (SMA) es considerada una buena candidata para el desarrollo de sistemas normativos abiertos. Durante los últimos años, el uso de las tecnologías SMA se ha incrementado no sólo en el ámbito académico, sino también en el desarrollo e implementación de aplicaciones industriales. Los SMA se han establecido como un paradigma de la ingeniería de software para la creación de sistemas adaptativos complejos, en entornos distribuidos y heterogéneos. Esta tesis se centra en el análisis y diseño de sistemas normativos abiertos utilizando la tecnología SMA. Algunas metodologías SMA se dedican al desarrollo de sistemas de este tipo. Sin embargo, después de analizar en qué medida las metodologías SMA actuales soportan el análisis y el diseño de estos sistemas, podemos concluir que todavía hay importantes problemas a resolver en el área. Algunos de estos problemas son la integración del contexto normativo del sistema durante el proceso de desarrollo, la falta de directrices para identificar y formalizar este contexto normativo, la falta de técnicas de validación y verificación que garanticen la coherencia del diseño final respecto a los requisitos del sistema, la coherencia entre los objetivos individuales, y la coherencia de las restricciones de cada entidad respecto al contexto normativo del sistema global. La principal aportación de esta tesis es una nueva metodología SMA llamada ROMAS (Sistemas Multiagente Regulados y Abiertos), que se centra en el análisis y diseño de procesos para el desarrollo de sistemas multiagente organizacionales, donde los agentes interactúan por medio de servicios estándares, y donde las relaciones sociales y contractuales se formalizan mediante normas y contratos. La metodología ROMAS define un proceso de desarrollo orientado a agentes y proporciona guías específicas para identificar y formalizar el marco normativo del sistema, así como las comunicaciones y los intercambios de servicios y recursos. ROMAS especifica tanto el comportamiento global del sistema como las características individuales de cada entidad. En la metodología ROMAS, agentes, roles y organizaciones se definen a través de una estructura social formal basada en un arquitectura orientada a servicios. Aquí, las organizaciones representan un conjunto de personas e instituciones que tienen que coor / Garcia Marques, ME. (2013). Engineering Regulated Open Multiagent Systems [Tesis doctoral no publicada]. Universitat Politècnica de València. https://doi.org/10.4995/Thesis/10251/28588 / TESIS

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