This Master's thesis investigates how project teams apply Use Cases and what problems they encounter with the employment of Use Cases by interviewing and surveying a number of Norwegian software companies. The thesis examines what developers and clients think is difficult and easy about Use Cases, how well the technique worked in a specific project, and how well the technique works in discussions with clients. A list of improvement suggestions for the Use Case technique is made based on the interviews, survey and literature study. The key findings in this thesis are summarized as eight improvement suggestions. The three most important are: (1) that Use Cases should be supplied with user interface prototypes when used in discussions with clients, (2) that companies should make use of a tool that makes it easier to get the overview of related Use Cases, and (3) that one should avoid to write details about the user interface in Use Cases. Other findings are that Use Cases are most commonly used for requirements specification, estimation, programming and constructing test cases, and that it is difficult to find the right level of detail when writing Use Cases.

Today, video games are mostly played at home while alone or together with friends. Multiplayer games are played by sharing a single screen or meeting up online to play against others. Within the MOOSES (Multiplayer On One Screen Entertainment System) project we seek to create a set of games for the new gaming paradigm that allows large numbers of players to share the fun of playing together on a single, large screen. To create games that are playable within the MOOSES context, one has to consider a series of special factors. These include elements of both user interface design, hardware and software architecture. In this study we describe these factors and how they can be handled with respect to making fun games for a large number of players on a single screen. Then, in the final and most important part of the study we describe five games that are suited for the special demands of the MOOSES framework - a war game, a football game, a music game, a survival based game and a quiz game.

Tailorability in ubiquitous computing systems is needed at different levels, depending on the targeted end users. For inexperienced end users lacking computer competency, high level mechanisms for tailoring are needed. Systems such as ASTRA, which use a service oriented architecture, can provide such high level tailorability through service composition. With service composition, services can be combined and configured to form applications. However, using service composition introduces new challenges for end users. To find appropriate services, users need mechanisms for searching and browsing services. Equally important is it that users are able to understand how services work and what functionality they offer. Service descriptions can ease this task, but the problem with existing approaches to service descriptions is that they are not intended for end users and are hard to understand. This work looks at social tagging, which is a collaborative process where users attach labels or tags to items. This leads to user created metadata, as opposed to metadata created by experts. By introducing social tagging in ASTRA to describe services, users are provided with a framework for sharing their understanding of services with fellow users. To create a solution for social tagging for service descriptions, a thorough problem analysis was performed. The analysis considered the design space of tagging systems to find appropriate design choices in the problem context. Providing several tag visibility levels was identified as important, especially community tagging. The quality of tags as seen from the community members' perspective is likely to increase, as members of communities often share similar opinions and understandings. An important difference identified between existing tagging systems and tagging of services is that services can be embedded in physical devices. Thus, services can be discovered and accessed physically, which means that physical access to the services' tags should be supported. A requirements specification for a tagging system was specified, focusing on the platform requirements for basic tagging mechanisms, tag based navigation, and searching. The requirements lead to a design of platform architecture, aiming at extending the UbiCollab platform with social tagging functionality. The architecture uses a client/server solution, where the server service is shared among a network of users and handles public and community level tags. The client service is a local service which handles private tags, and acts as an intermediary between end user tools and the server service. A prototype of the platform services and an end user tool was implemented. The implementation is demonstrated through scenarios, showing possible uses of the tagging system.

In this master thesis we have analyzed the software system DAIM, which is a web-based delivery system used at NTNU in connection with master theses and master students, with respect to software faults. Based on the documentation from the design stage of the DAIM project we have performed a technique called Preliminary Hazard Analysis (PHA), which is an analysis technique from safety-critical development. The results from this analysis have been compared with existing fault reports containing actual faults discovered in the system. Some of the intention behind our work has been to find if hazards identified with PHA can be related to actual faults found in the fault reports. In [17] it is stated that correcting software faults in later phases of the software development is much more expensive than in earlier phases and we have performed the PHA to see if some of the faults could have been avoided. We found that there were some connections between some of the faults and hazards identified, but the results were not entirely as expected. In our previous work we did a similar kind of analysis as we have done in this work regarding the analysis of fault reports and we have compared the results from our previous work with some of the results that we have obtained from this work to see how the distribution of fault types varies between the projects. The results showed that there were several differences between the projects, but some similarities were also discovered.

This report presents the results of a case study focusing on the release process of open source projects initiated with commercial motives. The purpose of the study is to gain an increased understanding of the release process, how a community can be attracted to the project, and how the interaction with the community evolves in commercial open source initiatives. Data has been gathered from four distinct sources to form the basis of this thesis. A thorough review of the open source literature has been performed. To further substantiate the data gathered from the literature study and to gain qualitative insights from companies heavily involved with open source development, four Norwegian companies adopting open source strategies have been interviewed. Data has also been gathered from active participation in the release process of the Keywatch networking software, including the creation of a web site and promotion of the project to build a community. Finally, the web sites of six company-initiated open source projects have been studied to gain further insight into how commercial open source projects are presented. The contributions of this report can be divided into two parts; a description of the open source phenomenon and theoretical guidelines describing important measures to be taken into consideration when releasing software as open source. The description of the open source phenomenon is derived from reviewing the open source literature and includes a description of the history of open source, its characteristics, licenses, legal issues related to open source, and motivations for adopting open source software. The theoretical guidelines are based on corroboration of data gathered from qualitative interviews, reviewing of commercial open source web sites, and findings in the research literature. The guidelines are summarized in the concluding section of the report together with suggestions for future research. Keywords: Open Source, Qualitative Research, Commercial Open Source Adoption, Open Source Preparations, Open Source Release Process, Open Source Community Management

This project consists of two parts. In the first part we apply techniques from the field of text mining to classify sentences in encounter notes of the electronic health record (EHR) into classes of {it subjective}, {it objective} and {it plan} character. This is a simplification of the {it SOAP} standard, and is applied due to the way GPs structure the encounter notes. Structuring the information in a subjective, objective, and plan way, may enhance future information flow between the EHR and the personal health record (PHR). In the second part of the project we seek to use apply the most adequate to classify encounter notes from patient histories of patients suffering from diabetes. We believe that the distribution of sentences of a subjective, objective, and plan character changes according to different phases of diseases. In our work we experiment with several preprocessing techniques, classifiers, and amounts of data. Of the classifiers considered, we find that Complement Naive Bayes (CNB) produces the best result, both when the preprocessing of the data has taken place and not. On the raw dataset, CNB yields an accuracy of 81.03%, while on the preprocessed dataset, CNB yields an accuracy of 81.95%. The Support Vector Machines (SVM) classifier algorithm yields results comparable to the results obtained by use of CNB, while the J48 classifier algorithm performs poorer. Concerning preprocessing techniques, we find that use of techniques reducing the dimensionality of the datasets improves the results for smaller attribute sets, but worsens the result for larger attribute sets. The trend is opposite for preprocessing techniques that expand the set of attributes. However, finding the ratio between the size of the dataset and the number of attributes, where the preprocessing techniques improve the result, is difficult. Hence, preprocessing techniques are not applied in the second part of the project. From the result of the classification of the patient histories we have extracted graphs that show how the sentence class distribution after the first diagnosis of diabetes is set. Although no empiric research is carried out, we believe that such graphs may, through further research, facilitate the recognition of points of interest in the patient history. From the same results we also create graphs that show the average distribution of sentences of subjective, objective, and plan character for 429 patients after the first diagnosis of diabetes is set. From these graphs we find evidence that there is an overrepresentation of subjective sentences in encounter notes where the diagnosis of diabetes is first set. However, we believe that similar experiments for several diseases, may uncover patterns or trends concerning the diseases in focus.

This thesis presents results of the estimation effort improvement study for a major consultant company in Norway. The company have already established an effort estimation process, but want additional help in improving the estimation process and tools. Two major problems are identified; some estimates have very low accuracy, and they use multiple estimation tools and methodologies. Part of the main research on the state of practice was to determine the effort estimation models used and effort estimation accuracy. To better understand how the effort estimation process worked we compared the effort estimation practice against best practices and looked further into the relation between estimation models and expert judgement. The last part of the state of practice research was to check project reports to see if they used a common tool and had a risk checklist. The main part of the work has consisted of researching the state of practice at the consultant company and comparing it against known best practices and proposing improvements. Based on literature available this thesis presents practical improvements for the estimation process. The state of practice was determined by conducting interviews and going through project reports. The state of practice showed that they lacked a too for early effort estimation, so we conducted a case study for early estimation using use case point. This thesis proposes solutions to issues on tools and practices. The main contribution is a powerful effort estimation template.

This report presents the results of the development of a portal for open source software. The work is done in collaboration with Keymind Computing AS in context of the European ITEA project COSI. The purpose of this project is to develop a portal so that companies that got commodity software they want to go open source with can do so without loosing control of the development. The portal is built up using already existing tools to fulfill as many tasks as possible. The thesis also try to explain why making a portal for the release of open source by looking at the history of open source. Some of the focus here is on the development of the Open Source 2.0 which i identified by the growing interest among software companies to release their software under and open license.

The use of Open Source Software (OSS) has increased in both the industry and the public sector. The software intensive industry integrates OSS into their products, participates in the development of OSS products, and develops its own OSS products. The understanding of how and why the industry is approaching OSS is so far limited. To help fill this gap, this thesis intends to explore how and why the software intensive industry approaches OSS. This is done by performing an extensive literature study and by executing a web-based survey. This survey is distributed to a near representative sample of companies from the Norwegian software intensive industry and to a convenience sample of participants in the ITEA 2 research program. The research presented here shows that OSS components are widely used in the software intensive industry. Close to 50% of the Norwegian software intensive industry uses OSS in its development. The industry is mainly motivated to use OSS by practical reasons. OSS components provide functionality of high quality and the industry is satisfied with its use of these components. When using OSS, the industry benefits from the availability of source code, and easy access to components and information about these components. Companies participate in OSS projects because they use the software and because of the learning effect of this participation. The participation is however limited. However, some companies provide commercial services related to the OSS projects they participate in. Releasing a product as OSS attracts more users and customers to a product. These community members may contribute with implemented code, feedback, and requirements. There are, however some side-effects related to releasing an OSS product and companies should be aware of these consequences. The main contributions of this thesis are new understanding of how and why companies approach OSS, a reusable research design, and experiences performing survey research.

The aim of the project has been to look at how the knowledge about statistics of use might influence the usage of a wireless network. The project has been conducted in cooperation with Wireless Trondheim. A public display was set up at a café that has the wireless network available. It showed different sorts of statistics collected from the network control system, in addition to news and advertisements. No significant increase in use was experienced during the period when the screen was up, and the project needs to be conducted in a larger scale to see more obvious results. However, the project has provided Wireless Trondheim with insight on how public displays can be used to increase the awareness and hence the usage of the wireless network. Keywords: Digital signage, public displays, wireless networks, awareness, context, XML-feeds