Abstract ------------- Background ---------------- Like other businesses, the failures and problems faced by the software development industry over the time have motivated experts to look for software process improvement to create quality software rapidly, repeatedly, and reliably. Objective ------------ The purpose of this study is to evaluate if and how Lean thinking and principles primarily associated with auto manufacturing industry can be applied to software development lifecycle for Software Process Improvement (SPI). The secondary aim is to analyze how BPR can be integrated with Lean software development for process improvement. Method ---------- A derived Lean-BPR adoption pattern model is used as a theoretical framework for this thesis. The seven Lean software development principles along with four-step BPR process are selected as process improvement patterns, which effects the KPIs of a software organization. This research study incorporates both Qualitative and Quantitative methods and data to analyze the objectives of this study. The methodological framework of Plan-Do-Check-Act is used in the case study to implement process re-engineering incorporating Lean and BPR principles. The impact of adopting the Lean and BPR principles is assessed in terms of cost, productivity, quality of products and resource management. Results ---------- Application of Lean and BPR principles for software process improvement in the organization under study resulted in 79% improvement in test coverage, 60% reduction in time for test execution and analysis and 44% reduction in cost for fixing defects that were being passed to customer in past. Conclusion ------------- Based on case study results, it can be concluded that Lean, a bottom up approach, characterized by empowerment of employees to analyze and improve their own working process can be effectively combined with IT centric traditionally top down BPR approach for improving KPI’s and software processes. / +45 40968458

Please read the abstract in the dissertation.pdf of this document / Dissertation (MEng (Industrial Engineering))--University of Pretoria, 2007. / Industrial and Systems Engineering / MEng / unrestricted

Bakgrund: När covid-19 spred sig i Sverige under våren 2020 blev både samhället, näringslivet och andra samhällsfaktorer drabbade. Regeringen utformade flera restriktioner under årets gång och speciellt drabbad blev restaurang- och hotellbranschen. För företagen blev det snabbt viktigt att anpassa sig och tillämpa rätt strategi för att överleva. När covid-19 drabbade världen i modern tid skapade det ett unikt tillfälle att undersöka vilka faktiska strategival företag har tillämpat under en kris. Syfte: Syftet med studien är att nå en djupare förståelse i hur företag arbetat med strategiförändringar till följd av covid-19 och hur planering används i företags strategiarbete. Metod: I denna studie tillämpas en kvalitativ forskningsmetod med en abduktiv ansats. För att kunna undersöka forskningsfrågan har en intervjustudie gjorts. Data har samlats in genom semistrukturerade intervjuer från sex olika företag som ligger till grund för empirin. Slutsats: I studien framkommer det att samtliga företag har arbetet med att tillämpa nya strategiförändringar för att kunna fortsätta bedriva sin verksamhet till följd av covid-19. Företagen har inte använt någon långsiktig planering vid deras strategiarbete. Deras strategiarbete i covid-19 har istället handlat om kortsiktig planering, samarbete, kommunikation och kreativt entreprenörskap. / Background: When covid-19 spread in Sweden in the spring of 2020, both society, business and other important societal factors were affected. The government designed several restrictions during the year and the restaurant and hotel industry was particularly affected. For companies, it quickly became important to adapt and apply the right strategy to survive. When covid-19 hit the world in modern times, it created a unique opportunity to examine strategy choices companies have applied during a crisis. Purpose: The purpose of this study is to gain a deeper understanding of how companies worked with strategy changes as a result of covid-19 and how planning is used in companies' strategy work. Method: In this study, a qualitative research method with an abductive approach is applied. In order to investigate the research question, an interview study has been conducted. Data have been collected through semi-structured interviews from six different companies that form the basis of the empirical data. Conclusion: The study shows that all companies have had to apply new strategy changes in order to stay in business due to the covid-19. The companies have not used any long-term planning in their strategy work. Their strategy work in covid-19 has instead focused on short-term planning, collaboration, communication and creative entrepreneurship.

The study identifies how different stakeholders perceive service quality improvement initiatives in public higher education institutions in Ethiopia. For this purpose, a mixed research methodology was employed. Furthermore, secondary data were collected from a variety of literature and primary data were collected from academic staff and final year students at public higher education institutions using the SERVQUAL scale and through focus group interviews. The collected data were analysed using both descriptive and inferential statistics. The research findings indicated that all dimensions of the service quality improvement initiatives were perceived by academic staff and studentsto be verypoor. The reasons for these poor or low perceptions were: the high expectationsof the stakeholders, the government’s intention to expand, lack of adequate knowledge regarding the implementation of the BPR process, the lack of motivation by service providers, poor management and the lack of good governance by the universities, inexperienced workers, non-empowered and task specific frontline employees, the low quality of the infrastructure, non-value adding hierarchical structures and approval systems, ethical problems with some service providers, the high staff turnoverand the lack of experienced staff. In addition, at all new universities, construction is underway and as a result,there are problems such as the poor state of the dormitories, classes,bathrooms, recreation areas, lounges, TV rooms, sport fields and internet connectivity, while the libraries are not well stocked with books and periodicals either. This study has recommended that the institutions should have standardised instruments that can be used to measure the status of service quality improvement and deliveryperiodically and to identify the areas that have the highest perceived performance gap scores in order to redeploy some of the resources. It also needs to be pointed out that the service providers lack sufficient knowledge and skillsconcerning the implementation of BPR, thus training is recommended in this regard.It is further recommended that for effective implementation of the BPR process, the importance of the provision of different guiding documents, continuous monitoring of activities and top management support should be kept in mind. / Educational Leadership and Management / D. Ed. (Educational Management)

International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 30-November 02, 1995 / Riviera Hotel, Las Vegas, Nevada / The UC Berkeley Extreme Ultraviolet Explorer (EUVE) Science Operations Center (ESOC) is developing and implementing knowledge-based software to automate the monitoring of satellite payload telemetry. Formerly, EUVE science payload data were received, archived, interpreted, and responded to during round-the-clock monitoring by human operators. Now, knowledge-based software will support, augment, and supplement human intervention. In response to and as a result of this re-engineering project, the creation, storage, revision, and communication of information (the information flow process) within the ESOC has been redesigned. We review the information flow process within the ESOC before, during, and after the re-engineering of telemetry monitoring. We identify six fundamental challenges we face in modifying the information flow process. (These modifications are necessary because of the shift from continuous human monitoring to a knowledge-based autonomous monitoring system with intermittent human response.) We describe the innovations we have implemented in the ESOC information systems, including innovations in each part of the information flow process for short-term or dynamic information (which changes or updates within a week) as well as for long-term or static information (which is valid for more than a week). We discuss our phased approach to these innovations, in which modifications were made in small increments and the lessons learned at each step were incorporated into subsequent modifications. We analyze some mistakes and present lessons learned from our experience.

本研究旨在探討國立高中學校行政組織調整之需求性、剖析我國國立高中學校行政組織中，職務由教師兼任的概況、瞭解我國國立高中學校行政組織及運作之缺失、分析現行國立高中學校行政組織之改進途徑，提出有助於國立高中學校行政組織再造的架構，以提供學校及主管教育行政機關參考。採用的研究方法計有：問卷調查法、訪談法。 本研究係以高中教師及兼任行政人員、專職行政人員及主管教育行政機關之教育行政人員為研究對象。在問卷方面，以臺中縣市國立高中為研究抽樣母體，採分層隨機抽樣進行問卷調查，總計共發出問卷500份，回收411份，有效問卷411份，總回收率為82.2%。 本研究經過文獻探討及調查和訪談結果分析，得到如下的結論： 一、 現行國立高中學校行政組織架構，各校設立之組別大致相似。 二、 各校現行之學校行政組織中較迫切需要再造之處，頗符合現況需求。加強專業養成訓練；採勞務外包制；員額採總量管制。 三、 各校現行之學校行政組織架構較類似甲方案。較傾向於傳統之處室分組架構。 四、 國立高中學校行政組織，多數的填答者認為國立高中之規模區分維持現狀無須調整。 五、 國立高中學校行政組織，教學組、試務組以及訓育組較適合由教師兼任組長。 六、 現行國立高中學校行政組織及運作之缺失︰教師兼任行政工作意願不高；行政工作勞逸不均；行政組織結構缺乏彈性。 七、 現行國立高中學校行政組織改進途徑︰加強行政人員的專業養成訓練；改善各組行政工作勞逸不均；教職員採總量管制。 八、 國立高中學校行政組織再造，可透過將非屬核心業務外包或場所委外經營的方式來提升行政效率。 九、 進行國立高中學校行政組織再造，可以朝著裁併處室、裁併組別或歸併的方向調整。 十、 國立高中學校行政組織架構調整，以維持現狀的甲案最為填答者支持，反映出普遍冀求安定，但亦有近半數認同再造。 根據以上之結論，提出如下的建議，以供參考。 壹、教育行政機關方面 一、訂定組織再造計畫，因應未來實際需求。 二、行政組織法令鬆綁，賦予彈性自主運作。 三、從制度面根本解決教師兼任行政工作意願不高之學校行政組織運作的缺失，建議教師兼任的適合度較低的職務由專任行政人員擔任。　　 貳、對學校的建議 一、訂定工作流程的簡化措施，修訂學校的校務章則規程。 二、積極進行較迫切需要再造之處。 三、辦理勞務外包，減輕人員工作負擔，縮編員額節省人事經費。 四、非屬核心業務委外經營，開拓財源，減輕行政負擔，有利於組織再造；建議學校可以將餐廳、合作社、游泳池等場所委外經營。 五、加強行政人員專業養成訓練，鼓勵兼行政教師參與行政研習。 六、合理分工各組業務，避免工作勞逸不均。 七、簡化行政業務工作流程，活化學校行政運作機制。 八、 進行國立高中學校行政組織再造，建議裁併部分處室或組別。 / This study is researching the necessity of adjusting the administration organization in national senior school, and exhaustedly analyzing the condition that a teacher holds a concurrent administrative post. Meanwhile, we can understand the faults of the school administrative organization and its administrative operation, and then we can analyze the improving gateways used nowadays in national senior high schools. Furthermore, we can offer the skeleton of reengineering administration organization, and the references to schools and the managers of the educational administration institution. These researching methods which I used are including “questionnaire survey law” and “visiting discussion”. The object personnel that I researched were senior high school teachers, concurrent administrators, full-time administrators and some educational administration personnel in manager educational administration institution. As to the questionnaire survey, we took national senior high schools in Taichung City and Taichung County as the matrix of lamination random sampling. We sent out about 500 “asks-the-volumes” and returned 411 “asks-the-volumes”. The recall “asks-the-volumes” were all effective, so the total returns-ratio reached 82.2%. After literature discussion, investigation and visiting discussion, we come to the following conclusions: 1. The administrative organization skeletons of sections in national senior high schools nowadays are similar to one another. 2. The schools’ administrative organizations now needed urgently reengineering in national senior high schools are: strengthen the professional nurture training, the school services need adopting by “outside the service wraps”. And the specified number of personnel uses the total quantity control. These conform to the present situation demand. 3. The school administrative organization skeleton now traditionally tends to the way of “office room grouping”. 4. The majority of the answerers think that we needn’t adjust the present scale discrimination in high schools’ administrative organization and maintain the present situation. 5. The suitable concurrent posts for high school teachers are the Curriculum and Instruction Section, Examination Section and Extra-curriculum section in national senior high school administrative organization. 6. The demerits in high schools’ administrative organization and their operations nowadays are: teachers are not willing to be concurrent administrative personnel, the administrative affairs unbalance, and the administrative organization structures are lack of flexibility. 7. The ways of improving the schools’ administrative organization in national senior high schools are: strengthen the administrative personnel professional nurture training, balance the service work between sections, and teachers and administrators use the total quantity control. 8. As for the high schools’ re-engineering administrative organization, we may penetrate the outside agent to deal with the non- core business, or place request management in order to uplift the administration efficiency. 9. In proceeding the schools’ re-engineering administrative organization in national senior high schools, we can consolidate offices, or sections, etc., or combine some offices or sections. 10. In adjusting national senior high schools’ administrative organization skeletons, most answerers support to maintain the present situation. According to the above conclusions, my proposals are as following: --supply the reference 1. The proposals for the educational authorities: (a) To make the plans of re-engineering organization, be accordance to the future actual demand. (b) To loose the administrative constitutive law, afford the autonomous flexibility in operation. (c) To solve the demerits basically from the system surface that the teachers are unwilling to serve the part-time employment, suggest that some jobs unsuitable for teachers can be done by full-time administrative personnel. 2. The proposals for school authorities: (a) To make the brief measure of working flow, reedit the rules and regulations of school affairs. (b) To carry on what will be re-engineered positively and urgently. (c) To transact all labor services done by outside agent to reduce the burden of internal personnel, and incorporate personnel to save the personnel funds. (d) To afford the non-core business managed by outside agent, exploit the finance, lighten the administrative burden, will be advantageous of re-engineering organization. And proposal that school cafeteria, cooperative, and swimming pool can be managed by outside agent. (e) To strengthen administrative personnel’s professional nurture training, encourage concurrently administrative teachers to attend the administrative thorough study. (f) To divide each service labor rationally, avoid the unfair burden in assigning work. (g) To brief the administrative affairs work flow, activate the school administrative operation mechanism. (h) To be engaged in re-engineering administrative organization in national senior high schools, suggest consolidating some offices or sections.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-06-02T19:05:38Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 2434.pdf: 10415904 bytes, checksum: cf49390a38715c53ffe39e9881ed117c (MD5) Previous issue date: 2009-05-18 / Financiadora de Estudos e Projetos / Software inspection is a key activity of software quality assurance that can be applied in the whole development process since it is a static activity essentially based on reading. Depending on the artifact that is being inspected, we need to apply the appropriated reading technique. Stepwise Abstraction (SA) is a reading technique commonly used in code inspections. However, its application is laborious and time consuming. Aiming to help and facilitate the application of SA, this work presents CRISTA (Code Reading Implemented with Stepwise Abstraction), a tool to support SA-based inspection processes. This tool uses a visual metaphor to facilitate code navigation and has several resources to help program understanding and documentation. Due to these resources, CRISTA is also helpful for reverse engineering, re-engineering and maintenance activities. Three experimental studies were carried out to get feedback on the tool usability and usefulness for inspections and maintenance activities. The results provide insights that CRISTA is easy to use and adequately supports the inspection process as well as code reading by Stepwise Abstraction. Besides, in the context of maintenance, its resources make this activity less time-consuming. / Inspeção de software é uma atividade chave de garantia de qualidade de software que pode ser aplicada durante todo o processo de desenvolvimento uma vez que é uma atividade estática, baseada essencialmente em técnica de leitura. Dependendo do artefato inspecionado, é preciso aplicar a técnica apropriada. No caso de inspeção de código uma técnica comumente utilizada é a Stepwise Abstraction (SA). No entanto, sua aplicação é trabalhosa e consome muito tempo. Com o objetivo de auxiliar e facilitar a aplicação da SA, este trabalho apresenta a CRISTA (Code Reading Implemented with Stepwise Abstraction), uma ferramenta que apóia o processo de inspeção baseado em SA. Essa ferramenta usa uma metáfora visual para facilitar a navegação pelo código e possui vários recursos que ajudam na compreensão do código e em sua documentação. Devido a esses recursos, a CRISTA também auxilia nas atividades de engenharia reversa, re-engenharia e manutenção. Foram realizados três estudos experimentais com o objetivo de se obter uma realimentação sobre a usabilidade e a utilidade da ferramenta em atividades de inspeção e manutenção. Os resultados fornecem evidências de que a CRISTA é fácil de ser utilizada e apóia adequadamente o processo de inspeção, bem como a leitura de código utilizando a Stepwise Abstraction. Além disso, no contexto de manutenção, os recursos da ferramenta ajudam a diminuir o tempo dessa atividade.

The study identifies how different stakeholders perceive service quality improvement initiatives in public higher education institutions in Ethiopia. For this purpose, a mixed research methodology was employed. Furthermore, secondary data were collected from a variety of literature and primary data were collected from academic staff and final year students at public higher education institutions using the SERVQUAL scale and through focus group interviews. The collected data were analysed using both descriptive and inferential statistics. The research findings indicated that all dimensions of the service quality improvement initiatives were perceived by academic staff and studentsto be verypoor. The reasons for these poor or low perceptions were: the high expectationsof the stakeholders, the government’s intention to expand, lack of adequate knowledge regarding the implementation of the BPR process, the lack of motivation by service providers, poor management and the lack of good governance by the universities, inexperienced workers, non-empowered and task specific frontline employees, the low quality of the infrastructure, non-value adding hierarchical structures and approval systems, ethical problems with some service providers, the high staff turnoverand the lack of experienced staff. In addition, at all new universities, construction is underway and as a result,there are problems such as the poor state of the dormitories, classes,bathrooms, recreation areas, lounges, TV rooms, sport fields and internet connectivity, while the libraries are not well stocked with books and periodicals either. This study has recommended that the institutions should have standardised instruments that can be used to measure the status of service quality improvement and deliveryperiodically and to identify the areas that have the highest perceived performance gap scores in order to redeploy some of the resources. It also needs to be pointed out that the service providers lack sufficient knowledge and skillsconcerning the implementation of BPR, thus training is recommended in this regard.It is further recommended that for effective implementation of the BPR process, the importance of the provision of different guiding documents, continuous monitoring of activities and top management support should be kept in mind. / Educational Leadership and Management / D. Ed. (Educational Management)

The academic information service enterprise should continuously react to the rapidly changing environment in which it functions. The theoretical research pertaining to the study has shown that such enterprises which embark on re-engineering because radical change is required, should be knowledgeable in terms of what the change entails, why it is important to change and how the change takes place through re-engineering, organisational design and an innovative leadership framework. In order to ensure efficiency within its operations while focusing on its own sustainability, the enterprise should establish leadership roles which involve all staff in leadership on a daily basis. The empirical research focused on the attitudes of staff towards such a leadership driven enterprise. Results revealed that factors such as whether staff participated in re-engineering, their engagement with re-engineering proposals, their work experience and their language have a significant impact on the attitudes of staff towards an innovative leadership framework. / Information Science / M. A. (Information Science)

The academic information service enterprise should continuously react to the rapidly changing environment in which it functions. The theoretical research pertaining to the study has shown that such enterprises which embark on re-engineering because radical change is required, should be knowledgeable in terms of what the change entails, why it is important to change and how the change takes place through re-engineering, organisational design and an innovative leadership framework. In order to ensure efficiency within its operations while focusing on its own sustainability, the enterprise should establish leadership roles which involve all staff in leadership on a daily basis. The empirical research focused on the attitudes of staff towards such a leadership driven enterprise. Results revealed that factors such as whether staff participated in re-engineering, their engagement with re-engineering proposals, their work experience and their language have a significant impact on the attitudes of staff towards an innovative leadership framework. / Information Science / M. A. (Information Science)