No-code tools are a method of development to make it easier and faster for someone to create a simple or specific product regardless of prior programming experience. No-code tools are primarily used today to make ordinary applications or websites, for use as is,  or to try out a business idea. In this paper we introduce the reader to the concept of no-code tools and if software engineering students should consider using no-code tools in conjunction with their studies in some form. We primarily focus on no-code tools related to web development. It is an area where there exist a lot of competitors which are often marketed online. The requirements validation process within software development has a prototyping technique which allows the customer and endusers to experiment with a functional prototype. However, this comes at the cost of additional effort, which no-code could possibly negate through its nature of quickly creating functional applications. We investigate and see if no-code tools can be viable within the requirements validation process by using it for prototyping. We find that no-code tools’ limitations do not prevent it from being a viable way of both allowing the developers andcustomer/end-users to quick and easy develop functional prototypes. However, this fact varies depending on the requirements and the used no-code tool as limitations vary.

Background. Software companies make frequent development in their software products to improve their quality. Agile software development (ASD) helps in the rapid delivery of the software product with consistent quality to the customer. Agile Software development shares a lot of characteristics with knowledge-intensive works, and it also needs lot of knowledge from different domains of both human and com- puting domains. Knowledge is defined as a belief of one individual capability for an effective action. Tacit knowledge is a category of the knowledge management which is defined an individuals’ memory, action or beliefs. Moreover, tacit knowledge plays a crucial role in ASD. However, tacit knowledge is hard to transfer among team mem- bers as tacit knowledge is based on an individual experience. Tacit knowledge is not documented for further reference so there is a need to study how efficiently can tacit knowledge is currently being transferred in the industry, what challenges are being faced in tacit knowledge transfer and the mitigation strategies used to overcome the tacit knowledge transfer challenges. Objectives. In this present thesis, we focused on how tacit knowledge is being transferred among team members in agile software development. Objective 1: To identify the current tacit knowledge transfer mechanism in agile software development. Objective 2: To identify challenges in managing tacit knowledge transfer between team members in Agile software development. Objective 3: To explore mitigation strategies to overcome the challenges faced dur- ing tacit knowledge transfer. Methods. In this study, SLR and interviews were implemented to achieve the objective. SLR was used to achieve the first two objectives, and interviews were conducted to achieve all the objectives. Results. From SLR, a total of 21 challenges and 12 transfer mechanisms have been identified whereas, from the interviews, a total of 12 challenges, 8 transfer mecha- nisms, and 7 mitigation strategies have been identified. There were new challenges and transfer mechanisms identified in both research methods. Some of the transfer mechanisms consist of daily scrum calls and day-to-day forums among the teams. Both the research methods’ results indicate that one of the most challenging parts while transferring tacit knowledge is the lack of critical thinking with human orienta- tion. Based on the interviews, some of the mitigation strategies such as regular sprint meetings, and online whiteboarding were considered to overcome the tacit knowledge transfer challenges. Conclusions. Based on the challenges identified from the interview, it is evident that teams working in distributed teams are facing more challenges in transferring tacit knowledge, and tacit knowledge transfer sessions should be recorded to reduce the challenges.

This dissertation is a part of an intended long-term research project with the objectives to make software development more scientific and rigorous, thereby to achieve better software quality and to facilitate automated software production; and has two major components: the design of the specification transition paradigm for software development and the theoretical study of the system specification phase in the paradigm. First, after an extensive analysis and comparison of various formalisms, a paradigm for integrating various formal specification and verification methods (predicate transition Petri nets, first order temporal logic, the algebraic, the axiomatic, the denotational, and the operational approaches) in software development has been developed. The model more effectively incorporates foremost formalisms than any other models (the Automatic Programming Project [Bal85], the CIP Project [ClP85], the Larch Project [GHW85] and the RAISE Project [MG87]) and has the following distinctive features: (1) specifications are viewed both as a set of products and a set of well-defined steps of a process, (2) specifications (as a set of products) at different development steps are to be written and verified by different formalisms, (3) specification (as a process) spans from the requirement phase to the detailed design phase, (4) specification for both concurrent and sequential software is supported, and (5) specifications for different aspects (concurrent control abstraction, data abstraction, and procedural abstraction) of a piece of software are dealt with separately. Second, an intensive and in-depth investigation of the system specification phase in the paradigm results in: - a design methodology for predicate transition nets, which incorporates the separate definition technique in Ada [Ada83] and state decomposition technique in Statechart [Har88] into the traditional transformation techniques for Petri nets, and therefore will significantly reduce the design complexity and enhance the comprehensibility of large predicate transition net specifications; - the establishment of a fundamental relationship between predicate transition nets and first order temporal logic and the design of an algorithm for systematically translating predicate transition nets into equivalent temporal logic formulae. Therefore the goal to combine the strengths of both formalisms, i.e. to use predicate transition nets as a specification method and to use temporal logic as a verification method, is achieved; and - the discovery of a special temporal logic proof technique based on a Hilbert-style logic system to verify various properties of predicate transition nets and the associated theorems. Thus temporal logic is effectively used as an analysis method for both safety and liveness properties of predicate transition nets. / Ph. D.

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<p>Many scientific problems contain nonlinear systems of equations that require multiple iterations to reach converged results. Such software pattern follows the bulk synchronous parallel model. In that sense, an iteration is a superstep, which includes computation of local data, global communication to update data for the next iteration, and synchronization between iterations. In modern HPC environments, MPI is used to distribute data and OpenMP is used to accelerate computation of each data. More MPI processes increase the cost of communication and synchronization whereas more OpenMP threads increase the overhead of multithreading. A proper combination of MPI and OpenMP is critical to accelerate each superstep. Proper orchestration of MPI processes and OpenMP threads is also needed to efficiently use the underlying hardware resources.</p> <p>  </p> <p>Purdue’s multi-purpose nanodevice simulation tool NEMO5 distributes the computation of independent spectral points by MPI. The computation of each spectral point is accelerated with OpenMP threads. A few examples of resource utilization optimizations are presented. One type of simulation applies the non-equilibrium Green’s function method to accurately predict drug molecules. Our profiling results suggest the optimum combination has more MPI processes and fewer OpenMP threads. However, NEMO5's memory usage has large spikes for each spectral point. Such behavior limits the concurrency of spectral point calculation due to the lack of swap space on HPC nodes to prevent out-of-memory. </p> <p><br></p> <p>A distributed resource management framework is proposed and developed to automatically and dynamically manage memory and CPU usage. The concurrent calculation of spectral points is pipelined to avoid simultaneous peak memory usage. This allows more MPI processes and fewer OpenMP threads for higher parallel efficiency. Automatic CPU usage adjustment also reduces the time cost to fill and drain the calculation pipeline. The resource management framework requires minimum code intrusion and successfully speeds up the calculation. It can also be generalized for other simulation software.</p>

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This paper explores the construct of Boundaries and Boundary Spanning in software development teams that consist of members located in both the U.S. and in India. Drawing on literature pertaining to boundaries in business, global boundaries, cultural boundaries, virtual team boundaries, and organizational boundaries, two studies were conducted. The first study measured the boundary spanning behaviors of software team managers of 25 teams. These results were analyzed in conjunction with a standard measure of software team output. No support was found for the hypothesis that frequency of team manager boundary spanning behavior had an impact on overall team output. In the second study, interviews were conducted of 20 software team managers to better understand their perceptions of the boundaries to team success. Managers cited several boundaries to team output, such as those of communication and issues of power-distance. Nearly all managers felt that time zone difference, a temporal boundary, was the most impactful to their own team success. Through flexible pattern matching analysis, categories of team boundaries have been proposed. / Business Administration/Management Information Systems

This thesis work presents the software development stages for a vibration analysis tool developed for a company that produces mining machinery and is interested in monitoring their machines' behaviour. The developed application contributes directly to the field of vibration analysis which is widely applied in many areas nowadays. Such areas include in addition to the mining industry, the automotive industry, and other industries producing rotating machinery. The application developed interfaces with a device designed to acquire vibration data through a three axis acceleration sensor. The device then sends the data wirelessly via Bluetooth technology to a computer on which the application is running. The application then processes the data by applying signal conditioning functions on it. These functions include filtering, Fast and Fourier Transforms. Plots are then generated in order to monitor the machine's behaviour. Additionally, the unfiltered data is logged into a file which allows for playing it back for a more in depth analysis in the future. The application also provides a reporting system that generates reports providing a summary of the machine's behaviour and recommendations for adjusting the machine in order to obtain a better performance. This application provides the company with a reliable and practical way of monitoring their machines, and acts as a solid base for future research that could involve diagnostics and control. / Thesis / Master of Applied Science (MASc)

Product quality is directly related to how well that product meets the customer's needs and intents. It is paramount, therefore, to capture customer requirements correctly and succinctly. Unfortunately, most development models tend to avoid, or only vaguely define the process by which requirements are generated. Other models rely on formalistic characterizations that require specialized training to understand. To address such drawbacks we introduce the Requirements Generation Model (RGM) that (a) decomposes the conventional "requirements analysis" phase into sub-phases which focus and refine requirements generation activities, (b) constrains and structures those activities, and (c) incorporates a monitoring methodology to assist in detecting and resolving deviations from process activities defined by the RGM. We present an empirical study of the RGM in an industrial setting, and results derived from this study that substantiate the effectiveness of the RGM in producing a better set of requirements. / Ph. D.