<p>The products The Company manufactures are used in an area of the industry where errors leading to a stop in production can be quite expensive. Therefore are testing of the products important and the tests can also give indications about the quality of the products.</p><p>The Company is in a phase where they are developing a new product line to support all existing and future products. In this phase, it was decided that all products will use a common framework for unit testing and a common build system for all products. One part of the thesis was to investigate and evaluate different frameworks for unit testing and tools for a build system. The unit test framework that were evaluated are Cppunit, cfix, NUnit, Boost test library, Unit Testing++ and CxxTest. The result of the evaluation was that CppUnit were recommended. For the build system MSBuild, NAnt, Automated Build Studio and Cruise Control .NET were evaluated. The recommended tools for a build system is MSBuild in combination with Cruise Control .Net if The Company is interested in the functionality Cruise Control .Net has to offer.</p><p>The Company also has an interest in evaluating the current test processes and identify improvements as a part of The Company’ s objective were all products should follow a common test process. In order to identify these improvements a literature study of four test process improvement frameworks (Test Process Improvement, Test Maturity Model Integrated, Minimal Test Practice Framework and Test Improvement Model) were carried out. Out of these four frameworks Test Process Improvement (TPI) were chosen to assist when identifying improvements. With the help of TPI a limited assessment took place to give indications about the test maturity for three of The Company’s products where two of the products had low maturity. Results of the improvement measures can be summed up with the need to harmonize the documents, standardize and document the various processes.</p><p>As a last part of the thesis the possibility to automate testing of two of the products graphical user interfaces with the program Test Complete were investigated. For one of the products the result was that it worked satisfactorily and for the other product it did not work at all. This resulted in recommendations for how The Company should proceed with automated testing of the graphical user interface.</p> / <p>De produkter som företaget tillverkar används i huvudsak inom ett område av branschen där fel som leder till stopp i produktionen kan vara ganska dyrt. Detta gör testning av produkterna viktiga och tester kan också ge indikationer om kvaliteten på produkterna.</p><p>Företaget är i en fas där man utvecklar en ny produktlinje som ska stödja alla befintliga och framtida produkter. I denna fas har man beslutat att alla produkterna ska använda ett gemensant ramverk för enhetstestning och även använda ett gemensamt byggsystem för samtliga produkter. En del av examensarbetet var att undersöka och utvärdera olika ramverk för enhets testning och verktyg för byggsystem. De ramverk som utvärderades var CppUnit, cfix, NUnit, Boost test library, unitTest++ och CxxTest. Utvärderingen ledde fram till att CppUnit rekommenderades till företaget. Verktyg som utvärderades för byggsystem var MSBuild, NAnt, Automated Build Studio och Cruise Control .Net. För byggsystem rekommenderas MSBuild i kombination med Cruise Control .Net ifall företaget är intresserade av den extra funktionalitet som Cruise Control .Net har att erbjuda.</p><p>Företaget har även ett intresse av att utvärdera den nuvarande testprocessen och identifiera förbättringar som ett led i att befintliga produkter skall följa en gemensam testprocess. För att kunna identifiera dessa förbättringar utfördes en litteraturstudie över fyra stycken test process förbättrings ramverk (Test Process Improvent, Test Maturity Model integrated, Minimal Test Practice Framework och Test Improvement Model). Utav dessa fyra ramverk så valdes Test Process Improvement (TPI) ut som en hjälp för att identifiera förbättringar. Med hjälp av TPI utfördes en begränsad bedömning av företagets mogenhetsgrad på tre produkter, där två av produkterna har en låg mogenhetsgrad. Resultat av förbättringsåtgärderna kan sammanfattas med att man bör harmonisera dokument, standardisera och dokumentera olika processer.</p><p>Som en sista del i examensarbetet så utvärderades möjligheten att automatisera testning på två av produkternas grafiska användargränssnitt med programmet TestComplete. För en av produkterna blev resultatet att det fungerade tillfredställande och för den andra produkten så fungerade det inte alls. Resultatet blev rekommendationer för hur företaget borde gå vidare med automatisering av testnig på det grafiska användargränssnittet.</p>

<p>When implementing an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system, the system has to be adapted to the organisation. But just as important, the business processes of the organisation have to be reengineered in order to take full advantage of the ERP system. Noblessa Sverige AB, which is a sales company to the German kitchen producer Nobilia, has been growing remarkably since the start 2001 and has begun discussing an ERP system purchase. The order process of today has reached the limit of its capacity and something has to be done in order to meet the increasing sales volume.</p><p>The purpose of this master’s thesis is to analyse and reengineer the order process as a preparation for an ERP system implementation. The outcome of this thesis is a suggestion of a process model of the order process, which also can be used as a foundation for a requirements specification for the ERP system purchase. In order to take advantage of the benefits of the existing order process, the reengineering starts with mapping the current process.</p><p>Noblessa Sverige AB is a company that is growing and changing from one day to another. Changes have arisen during the writing of this thesis which has made the work even more interesting and challenging. The most important change is the opening of a central warehouse in Norrköping, which has been taken in consideration when we designed the new process model.</p><p>After mapping and achieving an understanding of the current order process, we found a few things that could be improved. Above all, there exist many manual tasks that can be automated with the ERP system. Furthermore, there are tasks that should be moved from one department or function to another because it is more suitable to perform them there. We also found that Noblessa Sverige AB should improve the integration and cooperation with its suppliers, especially Nobilia. Nobilia is the main owner and main supplier of Noblessa Sverige AB, the conditions for cooperation are therefore very good.</p>

<p>Requirements engineering (RE) tools are software tools which provide automated assistance during the RE process. However, the RE practice relies on office tools rather than RE-tools provided by various companies. Reasons for not using the RE-tools include financial causes. The part of the problem also lies in the difficulty to evaluate such tools before acquisition to support the RE process. Hence, to support the completeness and effectiveness of RE-tool evaluation, a sound framework providing methodological guidelines is needed.</p><p>This work proposes an RE-tool evaluation approach (R-TEA), which provides a systematic way of the RE-tool assessment using two evaluation frameworks. The framework for the functional RE-tool requirements consists of three dimensions: representation, agreement, and specification. The representation dimension deals with the degree of formality, where requirements are described using informal, semiformal and formal languages. The agreement dimension deals with the degree of agreement among project participants through communication means. The specification dimension deals with the degree of requirements understanding and completeness at a given time moment. The second framework categorises the non-functional RE-tool features to process, product, and external requirements. Process requirements characterise constraints placed upon the user’s work practice. Product requirements specify the desired qualitative characteristics of RE-tools. External requirements are derived from the user’s internal and external environment.</p><p>Both frameworks are applied to a specification exemplar which application initiates preparation of the requirements specification for the RE-tool selection. Assessment of the RE-tools’ compatibility to the specified RE-tool requirements is performed using different evaluation techniques. Decision about RE-tool selection is made after summarising all the assessment results.</p><p>A prototype tool is developed supporting the frameworks and R-TEA. The R-TEA method is tested in a number of case studies. The findings report on positive trends of the frameworks, prototype and the R-TEA method.</p>

Understanding the wide range of outcomes achieved by firms trying to implement TQM and similar process improvement initiatives presents a challenge to management science and organization theory: a few firms reap sustained benefits from their programs, but most efforts fail and are abandoned. A defining feature of such techniques is the reliance on the front-line workforce to do the work of improvement, thus creating the possibility of agency problems; different incentives facing managers and workers. Specifically, successfully improving productivity can lead to lay-offs. The literature provides two opposing theories of how agency interacts with the ability of quality-oriented improvement techniques to dramaticlly increase productivity. The 'Drive Out Fear' school argues that firms must commit to job security, while the 'Drive In Fear' school emphasizes the positive role that insecurity plays in motivating change. In this study a contract theoretic model is developed to analyze the role of agency in process improvement. The main insight of the study is that there are two types of job security, internal and external, that have opposite impacts on the firm's abilty to implement improvement initiatives. The distinction is useful in explaining the results of different case studies and can reconcile the two change theories. / National Science Foundation, grant SBR-9422228, the Ford Motor Company and the Harley-Davidson Motor Company. MIT Sloan School of Management, Center for Innovation in Product Development

Requirements engineering (RE) tools are software tools which provide automated assistance during the RE process. However, the RE practice relies on office tools rather than RE-tools provided by various companies. Reasons for not using the RE-tools include financial causes. The part of the problem also lies in the difficulty to evaluate such tools before acquisition to support the RE process. Hence, to support the completeness and effectiveness of RE-tool evaluation, a sound framework providing methodological guidelines is needed. This work proposes an RE-tool evaluation approach (R-TEA), which provides a systematic way of the RE-tool assessment using two evaluation frameworks. The framework for the functional RE-tool requirements consists of three dimensions: representation, agreement, and specification. The representation dimension deals with the degree of formality, where requirements are described using informal, semiformal and formal languages. The agreement dimension deals with the degree of agreement among project participants through communication means. The specification dimension deals with the degree of requirements understanding and completeness at a given time moment. The second framework categorises the non-functional RE-tool features to process, product, and external requirements. Process requirements characterise constraints placed upon the user’s work practice. Product requirements specify the desired qualitative characteristics of RE-tools. External requirements are derived from the user’s internal and external environment. Both frameworks are applied to a specification exemplar which application initiates preparation of the requirements specification for the RE-tool selection. Assessment of the RE-tools’ compatibility to the specified RE-tool requirements is performed using different evaluation techniques. Decision about RE-tool selection is made after summarising all the assessment results. A prototype tool is developed supporting the frameworks and R-TEA. The R-TEA method is tested in a number of case studies. The findings report on positive trends of the frameworks, prototype and the R-TEA method.

When implementing an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system, the system has to be adapted to the organisation. But just as important, the business processes of the organisation have to be reengineered in order to take full advantage of the ERP system. Noblessa Sverige AB, which is a sales company to the German kitchen producer Nobilia, has been growing remarkably since the start 2001 and has begun discussing an ERP system purchase. The order process of today has reached the limit of its capacity and something has to be done in order to meet the increasing sales volume. The purpose of this master’s thesis is to analyse and reengineer the order process as a preparation for an ERP system implementation. The outcome of this thesis is a suggestion of a process model of the order process, which also can be used as a foundation for a requirements specification for the ERP system purchase. In order to take advantage of the benefits of the existing order process, the reengineering starts with mapping the current process. Noblessa Sverige AB is a company that is growing and changing from one day to another. Changes have arisen during the writing of this thesis which has made the work even more interesting and challenging. The most important change is the opening of a central warehouse in Norrköping, which has been taken in consideration when we designed the new process model. After mapping and achieving an understanding of the current order process, we found a few things that could be improved. Above all, there exist many manual tasks that can be automated with the ERP system. Furthermore, there are tasks that should be moved from one department or function to another because it is more suitable to perform them there. We also found that Noblessa Sverige AB should improve the integration and cooperation with its suppliers, especially Nobilia. Nobilia is the main owner and main supplier of Noblessa Sverige AB, the conditions for cooperation are therefore very good.

Gerade in den letzten Jahren erfuhr Open Source Software (OSS) eine zunehmende Verbreitung und Popularität und hat sich in verschiedenen Anwendungsdomänen etabliert. Die Prozesse, welche sich im Kontext der OSS-Entwicklung (auch: OSSD &ndash; Open Source Software-Development) evolutionär herausgebildet haben, weisen in den verschiedenen OSS-Entwicklungsprojekten z.T. ähnliche Eigenschaften und Strukturen auf und auch die involvierten Entitäten, wie z.B. Artefakte, Rollen oder Software-Werkzeuge sind weitgehend miteinander vergleichbar. Dies motiviert den Gedanken, ein verallgemeinerbares Modell zu entwickeln, welches die generalisierbaren Entwicklungsprozesse im Kontext von OSS zu einem übertragbaren Modell abstrahiert. Auch in der Wissenschaftsdisziplin des Software Engineering (SE) wurde bereits erkannt, dass sich der OSSD-Ansatz in verschiedenen Aspekten erheblich von klassischen (proprietären) Modellen des SE unterscheidet und daher diese Methoden einer eigenen wissenschaftlichen Betrachtung bedürfen. In verschiedenen Publikationen wurden zwar bereits einzelne Aspekte der OSS-Entwicklung analysiert und Theorien über die zugrundeliegenden Entwicklungsmethoden formuliert, aber es existiert noch keine umfassende Beschreibung der typischen Prozesse der OSSD-Methodik, die auf einer empirischen Untersuchung existierender OSS-Entwicklungsprojekte basiert. Da dies eine Voraussetzung für die weitere wissenschaftliche Auseinandersetzung mit OSSD-Prozessen darstellt, wird im Rahmen dieser Arbeit auf der Basis vergleichender Fallstudien ein deskriptives Modell der OSSD-Prozesse hergeleitet und mit Modellierungselementen der UML formalisiert beschrieben. Das Modell generalisiert die identifizierten Prozesse, Prozessentitäten und Software-Infrastrukturen der untersuchten OSSD-Projekte. Es basiert auf einem eigens entwickelten Metamodell, welches die zu analysierenden Entitäten identifiziert und die Modellierungssichten und -elemente beschreibt, die zur UML-basierten Beschreibung der Entwicklungsprozesse verwendet werden. In einem weiteren Arbeitsschritt wird eine weiterführende Analyse des identifizierten Modells durchgeführt, um Implikationen, und Optimierungspotentiale aufzuzeigen. Diese umfassen beispielsweise die ungenügende Plan- und Terminierbarkeit von Prozessen oder die beobachtete Tendenz von OSSD-Akteuren, verschiedene Aktivitäten mit unterschiedlicher Intensität entsprechend der subjektiv wahrgenommenen Anreize auszuüben, was zur Vernachlässigung einiger Prozesse führt. Anschließend werden Optimierungszielstellungen dargestellt, die diese Unzulänglichkeiten adressieren, und ein Optimierungsansatz zur Verbesserung des OSSD-Modells wird beschrieben. Dieser Ansatz umfasst die Erweiterung der identifizierten Rollen, die Einführung neuer oder die Erweiterung bereits identifizierter Prozesse und die Modifikation oder Erweiterung der Artefakte des generalisierten OSS-Entwicklungsmodells. Die vorgestellten Modellerweiterungen dienen vor allem einer gesteigerten Qualitätssicherung und der Kompensation von vernachlässigten Prozessen, um sowohl die entwickelte Software- als auch die Prozessqualität im OSSD-Kontext zu verbessern. Desweiteren werden Softwarefunktionalitäten beschrieben, welche die identifizierte bestehende Software-Infrastruktur erweitern und eine gesamtheitlichere, softwaretechnische Unterstützung der OSSD-Prozesse ermöglichen sollen. Abschließend werden verschiedene Anwendungsszenarien der Methoden des OSS-Entwicklungsmodells, u.a. auch im kommerziellen SE, identifiziert und ein Implementierungsansatz basierend auf der OSS GENESIS vorgestellt, der zur Implementierung und Unterstützung des OSSD-Modells verwendet werden kann. / In recent years Open Source Software (OSS) has become more widespread and its popularity has grown so that it is now established in various application domains. The processes which have emerged evolutionarily within the context of OSS development (OSSD &ndash; Open Source Software Development) display, to some extent, similar properties and structures in the various OSSD projects. The involved entities, e.g., artifacts, roles or software tools, are also widely comparable. This leads to the idea of developing a generalizable model which abstracts the generalizable development processes within the context of OSS to a transferable model. Even the scientific discipline of Software Engineering (SE) has recognized that the OSSD approach is, in various aspects, considerably different from traditional (proprietary) models of SE, and that these methods therefore require their own scientific consideration. Numerous publications have already analyzed individual aspects of OSSD and formulated theories about the fundamental development methods, but to date there is still no comprehensive description of the typical processes of OSSD methodology based on an empirical study of existing OSSD projects. Since this is a precondition for the further scientific examination of OSSD processes, a descriptive model of OSSD processes is obtained on the basis of comparative case studies and described in a formalized manner with UML modeling elements within the context of this dissertation. The model generalizes the identified processes, process entities and software infrastructures of the analyzed OSSD projects. It is based on a specially developed meta model which identifies the entities to be analyzed and describes the modeling viewpoints and elements which are used for the UML-based description of the development processes. Another procedure step includes the further analysis of the identified model in order to display the implications, and the potential for optimization. For example, these encompass the insufficient planning and scheduling capability of processes or the observed tendency of OSSD actors to carry out various activities at different intensities depending on the subjectively perceived incentives which leads to some processes being neglected. Subsequently, the optimization targets which address these inadequacies are displayed, and an optimization approach for the improvement of the OSSD model is described. The approach incorporates the expansion of the identified roles, the introduction of new or the expansion of already identified processes and the modification or expansion of artifacts of the generalized OSSD model. The presented model enhancements serve, above all, to increase quality assurance and to compensate neglected processes in order to improve developed software quality as well as process quality in the context of OSSD. Furthermore, software functionalities are described which expand the existing identified software infrastructure and should enable an overall, software-technical support of OSSD processes. Finally, the various application scenarios of OSSD model methods - also in commercial SE - are identified and an implementation approach based on the OSS GENESIS is presented which can be used to implement and support the OSSD model.

Wise investments in Information Technology have become increasingly important in staying competitive in today's environment. Massive amounts of people and IT-systems are involved in the process of input becoming output. As these employees and IT-systems must be harmonized, it becomes relevant to study how employees’ routines and habits are related to the usage and embeddedness of these systems. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to investigate how embedded IT can lead to improved business processes. This is done through exploring how embedded IT is used in workflows as well as to examine what support and hindrance IT can offer. Therefore, extensive theoretical research was conducted within the fields of habits and routines, business processes and embedded IT, developing a framework for analysis. Then, a case study was conducted where a specific process within insurance claims was thoroughly analyzed through interviews and work shadowing. This facilitated a within-case analysis. The results of the study showed the interdependency between the pillars of this study. Workflow habits and routines influences IT usage, whereas IT aims to support through automatization and informatization. However, to enable this and achieve a significant improvement, the processes it aims to support needs to be fully known.

Many software development organizations today are keen on improving their software development processes in order to develop software products faster, cheaper or better. For that reason, Software Process Improvement (SPI) has received significant attention from the research community over the last few decades. Process maturity models have become widely known for benchmarking software processes against predefined practices and for identifying processes to be improved or implemented, whereas process improvement approaches were developed for guiding the actual process improvement process. However, despite a wide number of provided guidelines on how to standardize the processes and how to run process improvement efforts, only a few SPI initiatives have succeeded. About 70% of the SPI initiatives fail and a significant number do not even get started. Many studies argue that the success of the SPI initiatives is dependent on the organizational, social and managerial aspects of process improvement. Those aspects however are not sufficiently covered by the existing SPI approaches and models. The little knowledge on organizational, social and managerial aspects of SPI that is available is mostly scattered across the domain. Hence, there is lack of a holistic overview of the current SPI domain that provides sufficient coverage of organizational, social and managerial aspects of SPI. This thesis has explored the organizational, social and managerial aspects of SPI and placed them into the context of the SPI domain. Its main research result is Software Process Improvement Framework (SPIF). The framework provides an overview of the SPI domain and positions theories representing organizational, social and managerial aspects of SPI in the context of existing SPI approaches, models, methods and practices. SPIF is based on the existing theoretical framework for SPI environment proposed by Sami Zahran. The SPIF framework has been additionally complimented with four additional outcomes of this study. Those are: 1) a list of organizational, social and managerial factors facilitating SPI effort, 2) a list of contextual factors impacting process change, 3) a process model for guiding software method adoption, and 4) a checklist representing the properties of successful and sustainable SPI projects. The research was based on a strong industrial cooperation. As many as thirty software development organizations were involved in this research. Methodologically, the research was conducted in line with the inductive reasoning, which guided the research into building the knowledge from empirical studies. However, at some stages of this research, literature studies were incorporated. The main research methods of this study are action research and case studies, whereas data collection methods are primarily structured interviews, participatory observations and surveys. The thesis concludes that implementing a recommended software development processes or practices using well defined SPI approaches is not enough. In order to implement successful and lasting process improvement, organizations also need to consider organizational, social and managerial aspects of SPI. The SPIF framework and other results of this thesis may significantly benefit software development organizations that plan to conduct software process change, or have already done it. These organizations may use SPIF for getting an overview of the process improvement process and the theories, methods and tools that should support it. The other results of this thesis can be used for: 1) incorporating organizational, social and managerial aspects in process changes, 2) for adapting process improvements in various organizational contexts, 3) for guiding adoptions of new software development methods, and finally 4) for evaluating and improving process improvement efforts. / <p>QC 20140213</p>

The main goal of this diploma thesis is analysed of the process management and its principles in the selected company. The theoretical part is divided into few chapters where basic parts like the process, process management, monitoring, busines process improvement and others are described. The practical part includes study of process control implementation in particular company. During the analysis process management are applied analysis, observations and interviews with employees and with leadership.