In this thesis, a requirements traceability model is proposed in order to make efficient and effective change request impact analysis. The proposed model is a requirements &ndash / requirements traceability model. There are several researches regarding software requirements traceability problem. The main problem of these researches is that the proposed solutions can not be applied to software industry with affordable changes. However, current literature begins to see that describing all the software requirements in a huge black box is not so much applicable to today&rsquo / s more dynamic and bigger software projects, especially regarding change management. The proposed traceability model tries to be a solution to these problems. Change requests and business rules are two important and popular terms for today&rsquo / s software industry. The traceability model consists of three types of software requirements: data definitions, business rules and use cases. The traceability model proposes bidirectional traces between these types. Data definitions, business rules and use cases are related to each other and they all should be seen as parts of a software system which should work together to make the software system work properly. Empirical investigation is made on a real industrial software project. These types were configured in order to match to the project specific needs in a reconfigurable way. Experimental results show that the traceability model has an acceptable degree of correctness.

We mainly study development velocity in agile teams in this dissertation. The concept of development velocity relates to the classical problem of time estimation in software development and software development planning. Building on previous literature as well as a case study, we explore and theorize the factors that cause ‘velocity flux’, i.e. fluctuations in development velocity through studying the relationship between development velocity and the rate of incoming customer feature requests. The aim of this study is to contribute to a better understanding of what causes velocity flux in agile development, and discusses the implications of the findings for research and practical implications for agile planning. As a result, we propose nine factors that cause velocity flux, and provide some strategies to overcome them in order to make a more effective sprint planning in agile teams.

“Who says what to whom and of what consequence?” is a fundamentally communicative question. This dissertation provides answers to this question by examining receivers’ expectations about, perceptions of, and responses to, requests for compliance. This dissertation asks: What impact does source credibility have on responses to and evaluations of request for compliance? Do people who receive requests for compliance have different language expectations for high and low credibility sources? If receivers perceive self-benefit from complying with a request, will that affect their responses to or evaluations of the message or message source? To answer these questions, this dissertation responds to the call for studies to extend language expectancy theory by focusing on interpersonal influence attempts; the results herein provide researchers with the opportunity to offer refined specifications when making predictions about social influence outcomes. In addition, this dissertation is novel in that it examines the intersection between language expectancy theory and predicted outcome value theory. / text

Η παρούσα εργασία έχει σαν στόχο την ανάλυση ενός προβλήματος δρομολόγησης το οποίο στη βάση του έχει ως εξής: Δίνεται ακολουθία διεργασιών που πρόκειται να δοθεί για επεξεργασία σε ένα σύνολο μηχανών. Η κάθε διεργασία χαρακτηρίζεται από το χρόνο επεξεργασίας της και θα πρέπει να δρομολογηθεί σε κάποια απ' τις μηχανές για χρόνο τουλάχιστον ίσο με αυτό. Επιπλέον υπάρχει απαίτηση από ένα υποσύνολο διεργασιών για επιτάχυνση. Το ζητούμενο είναι να δοθεί αλγόριθμος που δρομολογεί τις διεργασίες στις μηχανές ελαχιστοποιώντας κάποια μετρική απόδοσης, παράλληλα με την εξυπηρέτηση όσο το δυνατόν περισσότερων αιτήσεων για επιτάχυνση. Στα πλαίσια ενός εισαγωγικού κεφαλαίου δίνεται θεωρητικό υπόβαθρο που αφορά σε προβλήματα και αλγορίθμους δρομολόγησης, σημειώνοντας ιδιαίτερα τη διαφορά μεταξύ στατικών και δυναμικών αλγορίθμων. Αντικείμενο της εργασίας αυτής γίνεται στη συνέχεια η μελέτη του παραπάνω προβλήματος, σε περιβάλλον μιας μηχανής και σε παραλλαγές του οι οποίες σχετίζονται με παραμέτρους, όπως για παράδειγμα, προθεσμίες ολοκλήρωσης. Αποτέλεσμα της μελέτης αυτής είναι η ανάπτυξη, αλλά και η αξιολόγηση αποτελεσματικών μεθόδων επίλυσης, χρησιμοποιώντας γνωστά κριτήρια βελτιστοποίησης όπως ο χρόνος που απαιτείται για την ολοκλήρωση των διεργασιών, αλλά και κάποιες νέες μετρικές που συστήνονται και η ανάγκη τους επεξηγείται αναλυτικά. Τέλος στο τρίτο κεφάλαιο γίνεται επισκόπηση προβλημάτων που αφορούν δρομολόγηση σε περισσότερες από μία μηχανές. Τα προβλήματα αυτά ενώ αποδεικνύονται ΝΡ-πλήρη, οι αποδείξεις παραλείπονται και δίδονται παρατηρήσεις για την πολυπλοκότητα παραλλαγών τους. Η εργασία κλείνει με μια παρουσίαση της υπολογιστικής μεθόδου του δυναμικού προγραμματισμού, που γίνεται προσπάθεια να εφαρμοστεί σε προβλήματα δρομολόγησης. / The purpose of the present study is to analyze a scheduling problem, the def- inition of which is: We are given a sequence of tasks that are to be processed on a set of machines. Each task is characterized by its running time and has to be scheduled on a machine, for at least its running time. In addition, there are speedup requests from a subset of tasks. The scheduling algorithm is asked to produce a schedule that minimizes an objective function in par- allel with serving as many as possible speedup requests. The introduction gives a theoretical background concerning scheduling prob- lems and algorithms, with an emphasis on the di_erence between static and dynamic algorithms. The objective of the second chapter, is to study the problem above, in its many variations, with a reference to parameters like the number of the machines, deadlines etc. The result of this study, is the development and the evaluation of two algorithms, using objective functions like makespan, and also some new ones that arise in the essay and their need is analyzed. The thesis closes with a consideration of already known schedul- ing problems and its variants, that have been proved to be NP-complete.

Ši daktaro disertacija yra iš lingvistinio mandagumo – lingvistinės pragmatikos srities. Tyrimo objektas – sakytiniai prašymai. Tikslas – ištirti ir sugretinti lietuvių ir anglų prašymų mandagumo strategijas bei jų realizacijas, nustatyti ir paaiškinti tirtų kalbų atstovų prašymų panašumus bei skirtumus. Tiriamoji medžiaga gauta eksperimentiniu diskurso kūrimu testu – atvirosiomis anketomis su prašyti skatinančių situacijų scenarijais. Respondentai – aukštųjų mokyklų studentai: 100 lietuvių ir 100 anglų. Medžiagos klasifikacijai ir analizei naudota Blum-Kulkos ir kt. (1989) sistema, sukurta tirti prašymui kaip pasakymų sekai, sudarytam iš prašymo branduolio (minimalaus ilokucinės jo galios realizacijos vieneto) ir papildomų vidinių bei išorinių modifikacijų. Darbe remiamasi Brown ir Levinsono (1987) teorija, kurioje pasiūlyta perskyra tarp pozityviojo (artumas, solidarumas) ir negatyviojo (atstumas, pagarba) mandagumo. Gauti rezultatai rodo, kad nors lietuvių ir anglų prašymai turi daug bendrybių, lietuviškuose atsispindi mažiau dėmesio adresato laisvei ir privatumui, daugiau tiesmukumo, mažiau atsargaus pesimizmo, tikėjimo šnekos akto sėkme ir pan. Tačiau lietuviai labiau nei anglai yra linkę savo prašymus švelninti perteikdami artumą, atsiremdami į savaime suprantamus žmonių įsipareigojimus vieni kitiems, kurdami draugišką bendravimo atmosferą ir pan. Lietuviai, palyginti su negatyviai mandagiais anglais, yra labiau orientuoti į pozityviojo mandagumo tipą. Skirtingi... [toliau žr. visą tekstą] / This doctoral dissertation belongs to the area of linguistic pragmatics. The subject dealt with in this study is the analysis and comparison of spoken requests in Lithuanian and British English. The aim of the study was to compare politeness strategiess and linguistic realizations of requests, to identify and describe the similarities and differences between these directives in the chosen languages. The data has been collected by means of the Discourse Completion Test, which is an open-ended questionnaire used to prompt requests. The answers of 100 Lithuanian university undergraduates and 100 English university undergraduates were studied. The data classification was based upon the coding scheme of Blum-Kulka et al. (1989), which is designed to study requests as a sequence of utterances, which are made of a head act (the minimal unit of the realization of the request’s illocutionary force) and its internal and external modifications. Brown & Levinson’s (1987) theory with its distinction between positive politeness (closeness, solidarity) and negative politeness (distance, deference) was applied. Despite the numerous similarities that were found, the results demonstrate that Lithuanian requests show less consideration of the hearer’s freedom and privacy, less careful pessimism, more directness, and greater belief in a favourable outcome of the speech act, etc. However Lithuanians are inclined to soften their requests by conveying closeness, appealing to the duties and... [to full text]

Ši daktaro disertacija yra iš lingvistinio mandagumo – lingvistinės pragmatikos srities. Tyrimo objektas – sakytiniai prašymai. Tikslas – ištirti ir sugretinti lietuvių ir anglų prašymų mandagumo strategijas bei jų realizacijas, nustatyti ir paaiškinti tirtų kalbų atstovų prašymų panašumus bei skirtumus. Tiriamoji medžiaga gauta eksperimentiniu diskurso kūrimu testu – atvirosiomis anketomis su prašyti skatinančių situacijų scenarijais. Respondentai – aukštųjų mokyklų studentai: 100 lietuvių ir 100 anglų. Medžiagos klasifikacijai ir analizei naudota Blum-Kulkos ir kt. (1989) sistema, sukurta tirti prašymui kaip pasakymų sekai, sudarytam iš prašymo branduolio (minimalaus ilokucinės jo galios realizacijos vieneto) ir papildomų vidinių bei išorinių modifikacijų. Darbe remiamasi Brown ir Levinsono (1987) teorija, kurioje pasiūlyta perskyra tarp pozityviojo (artumas, solidarumas) ir negatyviojo (atstumas, pagarba) mandagumo. Gauti rezultatai rodo, kad nors lietuvių ir anglų prašymai turi daug bendrybių, lietuviškuose atsispindi mažiau dėmesio adresato laisvei ir privatumui, daugiau tiesmukumo, mažiau atsargaus pesimizmo, tikėjimo šnekos akto sėkme ir pan. Tačiau lietuviai labiau nei anglai yra linkę savo prašymus švelninti perteikdami artumą, atsiremdami į savaime suprantamus žmonių įsipareigojimus vieni kitiems, kurdami draugišką bendravimo atmosferą ir pan. Lietuviai, palyginti su negatyviai mandagiais anglais, yra labiau orientuoti į pozityviojo mandagumo tipą. Skirtingi... [toliau žr. visą tekstą] / This doctoral dissertation belongs to the area of linguistic pragmatics. The subject dealt with in this study is the analysis and comparison of spoken requests in Lithuanian and British English. The aim of the study was to compare politeness strategiess and linguistic realizations of requests, to identify and describe the similarities and differences between these directives in the chosen languages. The data has been collected by means of the Discourse Completion Test, which is an open-ended questionnaire used to prompt requests. The answers of 100 Lithuanian university undergraduates and 100 English university undergraduates were studied. The data classification was based upon the coding scheme of Blum-Kulka et al. (1989), which is designed to study requests as a sequence of utterances, which are made of a head act (the minimal unit of the realization of the request’s illocutionary force) and its internal and external modifications. Brown & Levinson’s (1987) theory with its distinction between positive politeness (closeness, solidarity) and negative (distance, deference) politeness was applied. Despite the numerous similarities that were found, the results demonstrate that Lithuanian requests show less consideration of the hearer’s freedom and privacy, less careful pessimism, more directness, and greater belief in a favourable outcome of the speech act, etc. However Lithuanians are inclined to soften their requests by conveying closeness, appealing to the duties and... [to full text]

Stakeholder satisfaction has in the modern day, become an imperative criterion to achieve project success. Satisfaction of stakeholders’ requirements however is challenging because these requirements evolve as the project progresses. Previous research indicates that as stakeholders continuously interact with a project, they gain more information and new requirements or request for modifications are likely to emerge as a result of this increased intelligence.  Nonetheless, conventional project management elicits requirements from stakeholders at the onset of the project, and uses these pre-defined requests to design the project. This practice hinders the ability of stakeholders to influence the project as it advances, and ill equips managers to handle and implement stakeholder requirements that materialize at subsequent phases. It is therefore important to investigate how emergent requirements of stakeholders come about and how they are managed in practice.  The objective of this thesis is to answer the research question, “From the perspective of managers, in the Scandinavian management context, how do emergent requirements of key stakeholders materialize, and how are they managed?” by probing into the ways via which emergent requirement of stakeholders come about, and investigating how managers deal with these emergent requirement upon their occurrence.  This qualitative study was conducted in the Scandinavian region using semi-structured interviews. Five respondents in managerial positions of the Umeå wastewater treatment plant project participated in the research and data collected concerned materialization and management of emergent requirements that surfaced during different phases of the project. The resulting data was then analyzed with reference to previously established theoretical frameworks.  Results from this study confirm that, new or modified requirements and consequently, requests for changes do emerge at even the execution phase of projects, despite careful planning. These emergent requirements are traced to three different sources and are managed in different ways depending on the type of requirement, whether strategic and critical or minor.

The practice of promoting food to children via advergames is a highly topical issue which attracts much concern due to the low nutritional value of the promoted foods. This thesis examines the effects of customised food advergames on children’s affective, cognitive and conative responses. It also investigates the role persuasion knowledge and prior brand usage have in children’s interaction with advergames. In particular, whether children’s persuasion knowledge acts as a barrier to those responses. This research is situated within the domains of marketing communications, consumer behaviour and consumer socialisation. It adopts an affect transfer theory, the Dual Mediation Hypothesis (DMH), to explain the transfer of affect from an advergame to children’s responses. Three versions of the same advergame were designed for the purpose of this thesis with different levels of customisation (i.e. control, low and high experimental conditions). An experiment among younger (5-7 year olds) and older (11¬12 year olds) children reveals that customisation in advergames has a detrimental effect on children’s affective, cognitive and conative responses. It was the control condition, without customisation options, that rendered a positive impact on brand attitudes and preferences relative to the other two experimental conditions. Persuasion knowledge does not influence children’s affective, cognitive or conative responses. This implies that children’s understanding of the persuasive intent of an advergame does not act as a barrier against its effects. Age had a significant role on children’s attitudes towards the advergame, but not on their other responses to it. Finally, prior brand usage has a positive impact on children’s responses apart from on advergame attitudes. This thesis has implications to policy and practice. It is evident that children from two distinct age and cognitive developmental groups cannot protect themselves from advergames’ effects. Therefore, regulators should broaden the scope of concern to older and younger children alike.

This essay investigates the relationship between gender and politeness, specifically in the areaof requests. The reason why this topic was chosen is that it is claimed that men and womencommunicate differently and express requests differently. The aim is to identify and clarifythe different manners men and women express politeness with regard to the phrases Canyou…? and Could you…?. A total of 200 occurrences of Can you…? and Could you…? wereselected and analyzed from the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA). The working hypothesis was that, in accordance with their gender “regulations”,women use Could you much more than men and therefore act more polite. The findings,however, are contradictory and indicate that this was not the case. Men tend to use the morepolite form Could you, and women tend to use the less polite form Can you. Moreover,requests are in some contexts expressed similarly by men and women. Therefore, the generalclaim about women being more polite in their language may not be correct.

Este estudo trata da manifestação da cortesia verbal nas interações feitas por e-mail dentro de ambientes empresariais espanhóis e brasileiros. Buscamos, por meio da análise quantitativa de um corpus composto por correios eletrônicos em Português e em Espanhol, diferenças e/ou semelhanças entre as duas línguas e culturas na forma de comunicar-se por este meio. Em primeiro lugar, discutimos conceitos básicos sobre o gênero discursivo de nosso corpus e, em seguida, passamos às primeiras comparações entre as línguas a este respeito. Com base, principalmente, nos estudos da Pragmática sociocultural, autonomia/afiliação (Bravo, 1999) e atenuação (Briz, 1998), verificamos os pedidos emitidos por brasileiros e espanhóis. Buscamos, em nossas análises, encontrar diferenças e/ou semelhanças linguísticas e socioculturais no que diz respeito a estes atos de fala, traçando uma relação com os estudos da cortesia verbal. Verificamos também a frequência e função dos marcadores de atenuação nessas interações via e-mail. Nossos resultados demonstram algumas diferenças e semelhanças nas formas de interação dessas línguas. Parece haver uma valorização, por parte do Português do Brasil, de uma cortesia atenuadora, que visa a diminuir o grau de imposição de um pedido, evitando, desse modo, um possível desequilíbrio entre os interlocutores. O mesmo não ocorre no grupo de e-mails representantes do Espanhol peninsular. Percebemos que, ainda que sejam línguas semelhantes do ponto de vista estrutural, existem diferenças pragmáticas durante suas interações por e-mail / This study is about the presence of linguistic politeness in Brazilian and Spanish corporate e-mails. Applying a quantitative research technique in a corpus composed by electronic mails in Brazilian Portuguese and Peninsular Spanish, we searched for differences and/or similarities between both languages and cultures in the way of communicating via e-mails. Firstly, we discussed basic concepts about the discursive genre we used as our corpus. Following, we compared both languages regarding those concepts. Based, mainly, on sociocultural pragmatics, autonomy/affiliation (Bravo, 1999), and attenuation (Briz, 1998) studies, we analyzed Brazilian and Spanish requests. We tried to identify linguistic and sociocultural contrasts and similarities in the way of communicating written requests. We also verified the frequency and role of attenuation marks within these e-mails. Our results demonstrated some variation and resemblance in how both languages communicate requests. It seems that there is an over appreciation from the Brazilian Portuguese side, for using attenuators, in order to diminish the degree of imposition of a request, and therefore avoiding a possible instability between the interlocutors. This preference does not occur among the Spanish e-mail group. We found out that, although they are similar languages, their pragmatic choices in e-mail interaction do not seem to coincide