<p>The purpose of this thesis is to develop software to stream input and output audio from a large number of computers in a network to one specific computer in the same network. This computer will save the audio to disk. The audio that is to be saved will consist mostly of spoken communication. The saved audio is to be used in a framework for modeling and visualization.</p><p>There are three major problems involved in designing a software to fill this purpose: recording both input and output audio at the same time, efficiently receiving multiple audio-streams at once and designing an interface where finding and organizing the computers to record audio from is easy.</p><p>The software developed to solve these problems consists of two parts; a server and a client. The server captures the input (microphone) and output (speaker) audio from a computer. To capture the output and input audio simultaneously an external application named Virtual Audio Cable (VAC) is used. The client connects to multiple servers and receives the captured audio. Each one of the client’s server-connections is handled by its own thread. To make it easy to find available servers an Automatic Server Discovery System has been developed. To simplify the organization of the servers they are displayed in a tree-view specifically designed for this purpose.</p>

<p>Saab Ericsson Space AB develops products for space for a predetermined price. Since the price is fixed, it is crucial to have a reliable prediction model to estimate the effort needed to develop the product. In general software effort estimation is difficult, and at the software department this is a problem.</p><p>By analyzing metrics, collected from former projects, different prediction models are developed to estimate the number of person hours a software project will require. Models for predicting the effort before a project begins is first developed. Only a few variables are known at this state of a project. The models developed are compared to a current model used at the company. Linear regression models improve the estimate error with nine percent units and nonlinear regression models improve the result even more. The model used today is also calibrated to improve its predictions. A principal component regression model is developed as well. Also a model to improve the estimate during an ongoing project is developed. This is a new approach, and comparison with the first estimate is the only evaluation.</p><p>The result is an improved prediction model. There are several models that perform better than the one used today. In the discussion, positive and negative aspects of the models are debated, leading to the choice of a model, recommended for future use.</p>

<p>A significant part of the software development effort is spent on detecting deviations between software implementations and specifications, and subsequently locating the sources of such errors. This thesis illustrates that is possible to identify a significant number of errors during static analysis of declarative object-oriented equation-based modeling languages that are typically used for system modeling and simulation. Detecting anomalies in the source code without actually solving the underlying system of equations provides a significant advantage: a modeling error can be corrected before trying to get the model compiled or embarking on a computationally expensive symbolic or numerical solution process. The overall objective of this work is to demonstrate that debugging based on static analysis techniques can considerably improve the error location and error correcting process when modeling with equation-based languages.</p><p>A new method is proposed for debugging of over- and under-constrained systems of equations. The improved approach described in this thesis is to perform the debugging process on the flattened intermediate form of the source code and to use filtering criteria generated from program annotations and from the translation rules. Each time when an error is detected in the intermediate code and the error fixing solution is elaborated, the debugger queries for the original source code before presenting any information to the user. In this way, the user is exposed to the original language source code and not burdened with additional information from the translation process or required to inspect the intermediate code.</p><p>We present the design and implementation of debugging kernel prototypes, tightly integrated with the core of the optimizer module of a Modelica compiler, including details of the novel framework required for automatic debugging of equation-based languages.</p><p>This thesis establishes that structural static analysis performed on the underlying system of equations from object-oriented mathematical models can effectively be used to statically debug real Modelica programs. Most of our conclusions developed in this thesis are also valid for other equation-based modeling languages.</p> / Report code: LiU-Tek-Lic-2002:37.

<p>The global competition and as the worldwide market has become more open a company’s ability to outsource activities to external companies based in other countries, i.e. offshore outsourcing, has increased dramatically. Companies are starting to transfer higher value-added activities that require certain skills, domain knowledge and experience, i.e. Knowledge Process Outsourcing (KPO). These activities are getting more difficult and complex to manage compared with standardised activities such as payroll, and predict another kind of co-operation and communication between the companies. When the sender and receiver are based in different context, such as organisational and cultural, other aspects might be added to the difficulty. The purpose of this thesis is to describe, and analyse knowledge transfer in a cross cultural context based on three categories identified in the theoretical framework: character of knowledge, distances between sending and receiving context and mutual understanding. Also to answer how cultural differences might affect the knowledge transfer process. The objective of this study is mainly from a Swedish R&D company’s perspective that has an established relation with an external consultancy company based in India. The activities are within the area of dynamical changing software development of complex, communication and knowledge intensive products.</p><p>A qualitative case study has been performed based on open target interviews. The findings show that the character of knowledge is an important factor to consider when establishing the knowledge transfer process. It was a need to transfer knowledge not only related to the product itself but also knowledge embedded in organisational routines, processes, practises and norms. This is related to distances between sending and receiving context: organisational and knowledge differences shown in organisational skills and previous experience, and cultural differences mainly visible in communication such as raising problems and an expected top-down approach by managers. The geographical distance adds to the difficulty due to the missing face-to-face contact. The sending company must therefore be very active and can not just expect the receiving company to handle the activity, and especially when the companies’ prerequisites differ as much as in this case. Culture awareness and mutual understanding are factors that improve knowledge transfer.</p>

<p>TOUCHE (Task-Oriented and User-Centered process model for developing interfaces for Human-Computer-Human Environments) is a process model for software development created to develop groupware. The creation of TOUCHE is part of a research project carried out at three Spanish universities. The aim of the project is to create a complete process model for the development of usable groupware. This thesis is part of this project and aims to further advance the TOUCHE process model so that it fulfills its aim on developing for usability. The thesis is based on research from the HCI (Human-Computer Interaction) and CSCW (Computer-Supported Cooperative Work) fields. In the thesis a new version of TOUCHE is created which has a strong focus on developing for usability.This is done by selecting four principles from the HCI field, incorporating what is considered to be most important when developing for usability. The principles are a strong focus on, and the involvement of users throughout the whole process, an iterative process, multidisciplinary design, and aim for groupware usability. TOUCHE is analyzed from these principles and missing elements are identified. The difficulties of integrating these elements into TOUCHE are discussed and finally elements are chosen to be integrated into TOUCHE. These elements include a usability guide, evaluation cycles, prototyping, pre-documentation and a multidisciplinary team.</p>

How might capabilities for algorithm animation be seamlessly integrated into a programming language that is both visual and declarative? Until now, visual programming language researchers have not attempted to answer that question, making the fruits of algorithm animation available only to users of textual programming languages. Users of visual programming languages (VPLs) have been deprived of the unique semantic insights algorithm animation offers, insights that would foster the understanding and debugging of visual programs. We have answered the question by seamlessly integrating algorithm animation capabilities into Forms/3, a general-purpose, declarative VPL. Our results show that such a VPL can support algorithm animation without leaving the declarative, visual model, without adding new concepts to the language or how to program in it, and without deviating from the uniform representation established for the language. In addition, our research shows that the characteristics of declarative VPLs result in some interesting algorithm animation features not found in other systems. / Graduation date: 1995

This paper seeks to describe the process by which a database-centric web application was redesigned and rewritten to take advantage of Apache’s Lucene - an open-source information retrieval software library written in the Java programming language. After the implementation of a Lucene-based text index of “semi-structured data”, a college radio station's card catalog application was able to deliver higher-quality search results in significantly less time than it was able to do using just a relational database alone. Additionally, the dramatic improvements in speed and performance even allowed the search results interface to be redesigned and enhanced with an improved pagination system and new features such as faceted search/filtering.

The global competition and as the worldwide market has become more open a company’s ability to outsource activities to external companies based in other countries, i.e. offshore outsourcing, has increased dramatically. Companies are starting to transfer higher value-added activities that require certain skills, domain knowledge and experience, i.e. Knowledge Process Outsourcing (KPO). These activities are getting more difficult and complex to manage compared with standardised activities such as payroll, and predict another kind of co-operation and communication between the companies. When the sender and receiver are based in different context, such as organisational and cultural, other aspects might be added to the difficulty. The purpose of this thesis is to describe, and analyse knowledge transfer in a cross cultural context based on three categories identified in the theoretical framework: character of knowledge, distances between sending and receiving context and mutual understanding. Also to answer how cultural differences might affect the knowledge transfer process. The objective of this study is mainly from a Swedish R&amp;D company’s perspective that has an established relation with an external consultancy company based in India. The activities are within the area of dynamical changing software development of complex, communication and knowledge intensive products. A qualitative case study has been performed based on open target interviews. The findings show that the character of knowledge is an important factor to consider when establishing the knowledge transfer process. It was a need to transfer knowledge not only related to the product itself but also knowledge embedded in organisational routines, processes, practises and norms. This is related to distances between sending and receiving context: organisational and knowledge differences shown in organisational skills and previous experience, and cultural differences mainly visible in communication such as raising problems and an expected top-down approach by managers. The geographical distance adds to the difficulty due to the missing face-to-face contact. The sending company must therefore be very active and can not just expect the receiving company to handle the activity, and especially when the companies’ prerequisites differ as much as in this case. Culture awareness and mutual understanding are factors that improve knowledge transfer.

This thesis presents empirical research in the field of software development with a focus on handling semantic aspects. There is a general lack of empirical data in the field of software development. This makes it difficult for industry to choose an appropriate method for their particular needs. The lack of empirical data also makes it difficult to convey academic results to the industrial world. This thesis tries to remedy this problem by presenting a number of empirical evaluations that have been conducted to evaluate some common approaches in the field of semantics handling. The evaluations have produced some interesting results, but their main contribution is the addition to the body of knowledge on how to perform empirical evaluations in software development. The evaluations presented in this thesis include a between-groups controlled experiment, industrial case studies and a full factorial design controlled experiment. The factorial design seems like the most promising approach to use when the number of factors that need to be controlled is high and the number of available test subjects is low. A factorial design has the power to evaluate more than one factor at a time and hence to gauge the effects from different factors on the output. Another contribution of the thesis is the development of a method for handling semantic aspects in an industrial setting. A background investigation performed concludes that there seems to be a gap between what academia proposes and how industry handles semantics in the development process. The proposed method aims at bridging this gap. It is based on academic results but has reduced formalism to better suit industrial needs. The method is applicable in an industrial setting without interfering too much with the normal way of working, yet providing important benefits. This method is evaluated in the empirical studies along with other methods for handling semantics. In the area of semantic handling, further contributions of the thesis include a taxonomy for semantic handling methods as well as an improved understanding of the relation between semantic errors and the concept of contracts as a means of avoiding and handling these errors.

Global software development has been a phenomenon of growing interest for almost past decade or so; and its adoption trend continues to gain momentum. Globally distributed work istaken up as an alternative to single-site mainly because of the economic and strategic benefits itoffers. Software development at geographically distributed environment is not a straightforwardtask and entails numerous challenges which are unique to this form of development. Requirements change management is considered challenging even in the best of conditions andit becomes even harder when performed at geographically distributed development locations.There is no existing model for managing requirements change in globally distributed softwaredevelopment context. This study uses qualitative research method to explore requirements change managementprocess and investigates the underlying causes of requirements change in geographicallydistributed software development. The research work proposes a model for requirementschange management for global software development. This model tries to incorporate the roles,activities and artifacts identified in the change management models.