M.Ing. / Please refer to full text to view abstract

M. Phil.

M.B.A / Please refer to full text to view abstract

As long as software has been produced, there have been efforts to strive for quality in software products. In order to understand quality in software products, researchers have built models of software quality that rely on metrics in an attempt to provide a quantitative view of software quality. The aim of these models is to provide software producers with the capability to define and evaluate metrics related to quality and use these metrics to improve the quality of the software they produce over time. These models can be quite cumbersome to implement as they require effort and resources to define and evaluate metrics from software projects. This dissertation aims to build an understanding of quality in software engineering by investigating those concepts core to the field. The basic concepts of the field are described, including quality, metrics and software engineering processes. Three software quality models and four approaches to using metrics to gain insight into quality are discussed with an aim to understanding the apparent strengths and weaknesses of each. This dissertation proposes a new approach to using metrics to gain insight into software quality. An equation, called the Product Quality Indicator, is proposed and critically assessed, which uses a combination of metrics based on requirements, tests and defects, to provide some insight into quality. Furthermore, a software product, called Metaversion, which relies on the Subversion Software Configuration Management system is presented. This software, which is a reference implementation of the proposed approach, aims to allow for the automatic collection and evaluation of the Product Quality Indicator. A case study is discussed where the Metaversion system is used and the results of the evaluation of the Product Quality Indicator are compared with the quality of the software as perceived by the testers responsible for testing the software. / Dissertation (MSc)--University of Pretoria, 2013. / gm2014 / Computer Science / unrestricted

M.Phil. / A project is successful if it is finished on time, to cost and to quality. Time and cost are relatively easy to understand and measure, however it is not easy to measure quality during the project life cycle. In spite of quality being stated as one of the major criteria of project success, appropriate attention to this is not always given in the context of projects. There are several possible definitions of good quality on a project. A project is said to be of good quality if the project's outcome has the following [17]: • Meets the specification • Is fit for purpose • Meets the customer's requirements • Satisfies the customer. Projects based organisations design and build complex items/systems such as aircraft or locomotives in relatively low volumes, or design and construct bridges, processing plants, that are unique, and once-off projects. Products such as aircraft have extended working lives, therefore after-sales support such as maintenance, servicing and upgrading are more important than for product-based organisations. A great proportion of management and engineering effort is therefore absorbed by such support functions. In projects more effort goes into design and production or construction engineering compared with product based organisations. According to Carruthers [3] "Very often projects that have been successfully completed within nominal scope, time and cost from the project manager's point of view turn out to be failures in the long term because of operational, product quality and/or marketing problems. The positive or negative influence of quality lasts long after 'cost successes' or 'schedule compliance' have been discounted or even forgotten." Examples of projects, which failed due to what the author regards as 'poor quality', will be discussed at the end ofthis dissertation (i.e. in chapter five).

This master thesis is focused on Total Quality Management implementation into Sovereign Hotel Prague. The aim of this thesis is to discover the quality level of this hotel and initiate such arrangments that would lead to longterm sustainability.Therefore there is a complete intern audit realized, that is conducted out of 25 quality checklists with all together 376 evaluation criteria. There are also used reviews from Tripadvisor and Booking.com for evaluation of the quality in hotel Sovereign. The results from the intern audit lead to implementation of TQM in the hotel. The theoretical part is focused on definition of quality, its characters, aspects and possibilities of quality management. It describes the principles of Total Quality Management and its use in hotel business. Facilities, services, organisational structure and market position of Hotel Sovereign is also characterised.

Trucking firms play a fundamental role in connecting supply chain elements inmany U.S. market channels, and firms of all kinds depend on trucks to pick up and deliver goods. Even though many products move almost entirely by way of ship, train, or airplane, almost everything is carried by a truck at some point during the delivery process (Statistics, U.S. Department of Labor, 2009). Because of this, it is critical that managersin trucking firms continually strive to meet and exceed customer and shipper customer service requirements and expectations (Meixell & Norbis, 2008). While a review of the literature shows that many researchers addressed numerous aspects of transportation performance quality, few of these investigations addressed therole and impact that truck drivers have on service-quality perceptions (Vansickle, 2002). The purpose of this research was to examine whether cargo handling by truck drivers had aneffect on a company's service quality perceptions as perceived by the recipients ofcommercial cargo. The SERVQUAL instrument was used to measure the gap between truck drivers' determinants of service quality as perceived by the recipient of the goods fromthese truck drivers.The findings from the study suggest that it becomes necessary for managers to train these truck drivers in more than merely following a route or delivering goods. They needreal marketing and

Blogs serve multiple purposes, resulting in several types of blogs that vary greatly in terms of quality and content. It is important to evaluate the quality of blogs, which requires appropriate evaluation criteria. Unfortunately, there are minimal studies on framework and the specific criteria and indicators for evaluating the quality of blogs. Moreover, quality is related to user perception, and should therefore be evaluated by the receivers. This dissertation examines the criteria and indicators that blog users consider important for evaluating the quality of blogs, and develops a user-centered framework for evaluating quality by conducting user surveys and post-survey email interviews. The personal characteristics that affect the users’ choices of criteria to evaluate the quality of blogs are examined as well. The study’s findings include 1) the criteria that users consider important when evaluating the quality of blogs are content quality, usability, authority, and blog credibility; 2) the indicators that blog users consider most important for evaluating the quality of blogs are understandability, accuracy, believability, currency, ease of use, and navigation; and 3) gender, education level, age, profession, purpose of use, and specific interests affect the user’s choices of criteria for evaluating the quality of blogs. Future research may involve exploring and applying the framework developed in this study to build automatic quality blog identification system for the purpose of assisting web users and information specialists to identify quality blogs.

Rocky Mount is a 35-acre State Historic Site in Washington County, TN dating to the late 1700s when it served as the First Capitol of the Southwest Territory of the United States. In Fall 2021, Rocky Mount acquired an adjacent tract which includes several water sources: an artesian spring, a ditch with running water, and a cattle pond. A residential spring located on a neighboring property flows along an eastern property line. The purpose of this research was to assess the hydrologic resources of Rocky Mount’s new addition to 1) determine compliance with state water quality standards; and 2) identify subsurface hydrologic connections between water sources. In winter 2022, we sampled the four water sources for pH, turbidity, dissolved oxygen (DO), electrical conductivity (EC), temperature, fecal coliform and E. coli bacteria during five site visits. Mean values for each parameter at each site were compared to state water quality standards and sites were assessed for similarity using the Kruskal Wallis non-parametric Analysis of Variance. In this study, none of the four sites met the state standard for drinking water due to presence of E. coli (drinking water limits E. coli to <1 CFU/100mL). However, all sites were well below the E. coli threshold for recreational water (<126 CFU/100mL). Only one site, the residential spring, was found to meet standards for recreational use for all water quality parameters. All other sites exceeded recreational use limits for pH (high alkalinity). Two sites, the cattle pond and the ditch, also exceeded recreational limits for turbidity. Kruskal Wallis test results indicated significant differences in water chemistry between sites for all parameters. Pairwise comparisons revealed differences between the residential spring and all other sites, suggesting different groundwater sources. The water quality findings will be helpful in future land use planning at the Rocky Mount Historic Site.

Work-life balance, happiness and well-being go hand-in-hand with the quality of life, the quality of working life and the level of satisfaction with both. A recent survey that took place in the Czech Republic in 2018 attempted to measure the quality of life using the WHOQOL questionnaire developed by the World Health Organization. It also used the SQWLi instrument proposed by Vinopal et al. to measure the quality of working life perceived subjectively. The overall aim of this work is to challenge the theory of Danna and Griffin, summarized back in 1999, which says that the quality of life and the quality of working life are interrelated domains. It is interesting to see whether the same results can be achieved even nowadays- almost 20 years after their statement was issued-with respect to the Czech population. The spillover theory supports Dana and Griffin's statements, showing the causal association between the concepts. The main questions of the study are the folllowing. First, is there a relationship between the quality of life and the quality of working life?. Second, how strong is the association between the quality of life and the quality of working life? Third, what are the levels of association between the quality of life and the quality of working life with respect to socio-demographic...