Thesis (M. Sc.)--Carleton University, 1993. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available in electronic format on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Industrial and Systems Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, 2006. / Dr. Yih-Long Chang, Committee Member ; Dr. Martin Savelsbergh, Committee Member ; Dr. Leon McGinnis, Committee Co-Chair ; Dr. Gunter Sharp, Committee Chair ; Dr. Doug Bodner, Committee Member ; Dr. Joel Sokol, Committee Member.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Texas A&M University, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 128-130). Also available online.

by Joe E. Defenderfer. / Bibliography: p. 71. / Prepared under Contract ONR/N00014-75-C-1183.

Stephen C. Graves. / "February 1984." / Bibliography: p.36-37.

Coordination of people, processes, and artifacts is a significant challenge to successful software engineering that is growing as the scale, distribution, and complexity of software projects grow. This thesis presents an exploratory case study of coordination of interdependent work in a practicing software development team. Qualitative analysis of stakeholder interviews was used to develop nine theoretical propositions that describe coordination behaviours. One proposition was refined by quantitatively exploring the structure of explicit dependencies between work items in relation to their resolution times. Structure measures drawn from social network analysis were used to quantify the structure of explicit dependencies between work items, revealing some lower resolution times were associated with degree centrality measures, but that network structures only explain a small proportion of the variance in resolution times. The results are compared with existing theories of coordination in software engineering and directions for further research are outlined.

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Uma metodologia que combina mapeamento e análise de processos, elicitação, mapeamento e análise crítica de conhecimentos e análise sociotécnica com base em análise de redes sociais foi concebida. A metodologia foi aplicada à uma pequena organização intensiva conhecimento LNMRI e permitiu a avaliação dos seus principais ativos intelectuais e sua capacidade de evoluir. Nesse sentido, com base em questões reais, tal como a saída de pessoas da organização, foram avaliados os impactos de prováveis cenários futuros. Para tal tarefa, foi analisada uma rede multimodal de processos, objetos de conhecimento e pessoas, utilizando-se um conjunto apropriado de métricas e meios, incluindo a avaliação das esferas de influências de nós chave. Para diferenciar a capacidade das pessoas em desempenhar diferentes papeis nos processos, alguns atributos dos nós foram utilizados como critérios de partição da rede, proporcionando assim, a capacidade de diferenciar o impacto da perda potencial de supervisores e operadores. A metodologia proposta possibilitou: i) a identificação de objetos de conhecimento e de suas fontes; ii) a classificação desses objetos segundo sua relevância; iii) a avaliação de vulnerabilidades da estrutura da rede LNMRI e iv) revelou os mecanismos informais de partilha de conhecimento. A metodologia concebida demonstrou ser uma ferramenta robusta para um amplo diagnóstico para subsidiar o planejamento de sucessão e também o planejamento estratégico organizacional. / A methodology combining process mapping and analysis; knowledge elicitation mapping and critical analysis; and sociotechnical analysis based on social network analysis was conceived. The methodology was applied to a small knowledge intensive organization LNMRI, and has allowed the appraisal of the main intellectual assets and their ability to evolve. In this sense, based on real issues such as attrition, the impacts of probable future scenarios were assessed. For such task, a multimodal network of processes, knowledge objects and people was analyzed using a set of appropriate metrics and means, including sphere of influence of key nodes. To differentiate the ability of peoples role playing in the processes, some nodes attributes were used to provide partition criteria for the network and thus the ability to differentiate the impact of potential loss of supervisors and operators. The proposed methodology has allowed for: i) the identification of knowledge objects and their sources; ii) mapping and ranking of these objects according to their relevance and iii) the assessment of vulnerabilities in LNMRIs network structure and iv) revealing of informal mechanisms of knowledge sharing The conceived methodological framework has proved to be a robust tool for a broad diagnosis to support succession planning and also the organizational strategic planning.

abstract: Sinaloa, a coastal state in the northwest of Mexico, is known for irrigated conventional agriculture, and is considered one of the greatest successes of the Green Revolution. With the neoliberal reforms of the 1990s, Sinaloa farmers shifted out of conventional wheat, soy, cotton, and other commodities and into white maize, a major food staple in Mexico that is traditionally produced by millions of small-scale farmers. Sinaloa is now a major contributor to the national food supply, producing 26% of total domestic white maize production. Research on Sinaloa's maize has focused on economic and agronomic components. Little attention, however, has been given to the environmental sustainability of Sinaloa's expansion in maize. With uniquely biodiverse coastal and terrestrial ecosystems that support economic activities such as fishing and tourism, the environmental consequences of agriculture in Sinaloa are important to monitor. Agricultural sustainability assessments have largely focused on alternative agricultural approaches, or espouse alternative philosophies that are biased against conventional production. Conventional agriculture, however, provides a significant portion of the world's calories. In addition, incentives such as federal subsidies and other institutions complicate transitions to alternative modes of production. To meet the agricultural sustainability goals of food production and environmental stewardship, we must put conventional agriculture on a more sustainable path. One step toward achieving this is structuring agricultural sustainability assessments around achievable goals that encourage continual adaptations toward sustainability. I attempted this in my thesis by assessing conventional maize production in Sinaloa at the regional/state scale using network analysis and incorporating stakeholder values through a multicriteria decision analysis approach. The analysis showed that the overall sustainability of Sinaloa maize production is far from an ideal state. I made recommendations on how to improve the sustainability of maize production, and how to better monitor the sustainability of agriculture in Sinaloa. / Dissertation/Thesis / M.A. Sustainability 2011

Word-of-mouth (WOM) communication is a well studied phenomenon in the literature and content propagation in Online Social Networks (OSNs) is one of the forms of WOM mechanism that have been prevalent in recent years specially with the widespread surge of online communities and online social networks. The basic piece of information in most OSNs is a post (e.g., a tweet in Twitter or a post in Facebook). A post can contain different types of content such as text, photo, video, etc, or a mixture of two or more them. There are also various ways to enrich the text by mentioning other users, using hashtags, and adding URLs to external contents. The goal of this study is to investigate what factors contribute into the propagation of messages in Google+. To answer to this question a multidimensional study will be conducted. On one hand this question could be viewed as a natural language processing problem where topic or sentiment of posts cause message dissemination. On the other hand the propagation can be effect of graph properties i.e., popularity of message originators (node degree) or activities of communities. Other aspects of this problem are time, external contents, and external events. All of these factors are studied carefully to find the most highly correlated attribute(s) in the propagation of posts.