The importance of collaboration has been recognized for more than 2000 years. While recent improvement in technology creates vast opportunities for collaboration, effective collaboration remains challenging as ad hoc teams work across time, geographical, language, and technical boundaries, and suffer from process inefficiency. My dissertation addresses part of these challenges by proposing theoretical frameworks for business collaboration and process management. Case study is used as a research strategy for this thesis and it consists of three studies. The first study proposes a process modeling framework to support efficient process model design via model transformation and validation. First, we divide process modeling into three layers and formally define three layers of workflow models. Then, we develop a procedure for transforming a conceptual process model into its corresponding logical process model. Third, we create a validation procedure that can validate whether the derived logical model is consistent with its original conceptual model. The second study proposes a framework for analyzing the relationship between interaction processes and collaboration efficiency in software issue resolution in open source community. We first develop an algorithm to identify frequent interaction process structures referred to as interaction process patterns. Then, we assess patterns' impact through a time-dependent Cox regression model. By applying the interaction process analysis framework to software issue resolution processes, we identify several patterns that are significantly correlated with collaboration efficiency. We further conduct a case study to validate the findings of pattern efficiency in software issue resolution. The third study addresses the issue of suitability of virtual collaboration. Virtual collaboration seems to work well for some cases, but not for others. We define collaboration virtualization as the suitability for a task to be conducted virtually and propose a Collaboration Virtualization Theory (CVT) to explain collaboration virtualization. Three categories (i.e., task, technology, and team) of constructs that determine the suitability of collaboration virtualization are derived from a systematic literature review of related areas. In summary, this dissertation addresses challenges in collaboration and process management, and we believe that our research will have important theoretical and practical impacts on the development of collaboration management systems.

Abstract The quality of a software product depends largely on the quality of the process that is used to develop it. In small software companies, the development process may be informal or even ad hoc, which causes uncertainty and variation in the product quality. However, quality issues are as important in small companies as in their larger counterparts. To sustain their dynamics and competitiveness, small organizations need to concentrate on the most effective quality assurance methods. Software inspection is a proven method for improving product quality and it provides a very cost-effective way for small companies to improve their development processes. This study introduces a framework for adjusting the inspection process for the organization's specific needs and evaluating its capabilities. The main focus of this work, however, is on refining and improving the inspection process. The improvement is guided by concrete instructions that are documented as process patterns. The pattern approach has already been used successfully in several other areas of software engineering. Patterns aim at capturing the best practices of software development and transferring this knowledge between people or organizations. The framework for inspection process capability originates from the literature relating to different types of peer review methods and experiments with flexible and tool-supported inspections in small companies. Furthermore, generic process improvement models are studied to find a feasible structure for the framework. As a result of the analysis, the i3 capability model is introduced. The feasibility of the model has been investigated in real-life software organizations carrying out inspections. After the capability evaluation, the inspection process can be upgraded with the aid of improvement patterns, which provide structured and easy-to-follow guidelines for implementing improvements. An initial list of patterns, describing solutions to the most common problems confronted in the establishment of inspections, is extracted from related inspection research and an industrial experiment. The contributions of this study are, first, the new view of the inspection process, based on the fundamental activities that are performed during an inspection instead of a series of stages, as it is usually presented. An activity-based process description enables tailoring of the process for organization-specific needs and its targeted improvement. Second, the study introduces a practical, lightweight method for implementing the improvement. Patterns are especially suitable in companies where resources are limited and full-scale improvement programmes cannot be initiated. Furthermore, the generic process improvement models do not provide detailed information on how improvements should be carried out, and the pattern approach represents a promising method for that. Third, the inspection process currently does not have a very significant role in generic software process improvement models; this study helps in outlining the importance of inspections. A similar approach could be applied to other software subprocesses to enable their evaluation and improvement.

Community ecology is the study of the patterns and processes governing species abundance, distribution, and diversity within and between communities. Likewise, phylogeography is the study of the historic processes controlling genetic diversity across space. Both fields investigate diversity, albeit at different temporal, spatial and taxonomic scales and therefore have varying assumptions. Community ecology typically focuses on contemporary mechanisms whereas phylogeography studies historic ones. However, new research has discovered that both genetic and community diversity can be influenced by contemporary and historic processes in tandem. As such, a growing number of researchers have called for greater integration of phylogeography and ecology to better understand the mechanisms structuring diversity. In this dissertation I attempt to add to this integration by investigating ways that phylogeography and population genetics can enhance studies on community ecology. First, I review traditional studies on freshwater fish community assembly using null model analyses of species co-occurrence, which shows that fish are largely structured by deterministic processes, though the importance of different mechanisms varies across climates, habitats, and spatial scales. Next, I show how phylogeographic data can greatly enhance inferences of community assembly in freshwater fish communities in Costa Rica and Utah respectively. My Costa Rican analyses indicate that historic eustatic sea-level change can be better at predicting community structure within a biogeographic province than contemporary processes. In comparison, my Utah analyses show that historic dispersal between isolated basins in conjunction with contemporary habitat filtering, dispersal limitation, and extinction dynamics both influence community assembly through time. Finally, I adapt a forward-time population genetics stochastic simulation model to work in a metacommunity context and integrate it with Approximate Bayesian Computation to infer the processes that govern observed community composition patterns. Overall, I show that community ecology can be greatly enhanced by including information and methods from different but related fields and encourage future ecologists to further this research to gain a greater understanding of biological diversity.

The efficiency of hydraulic drive systems in mobile machines is influenced by several factors, like the operators’ guidance, weather conditions, material respectively loading properties and primarily the working cycle. This leads to varying operation points, which have to be performed by the drive system. Regarding efficiency analysis, the usage of standardized working cycles gained through measurements or synthetically generated is state of the art. Thereby, only a small extract of the real usage profile is taken into account. This contribution deals with process pattern recognition (PPR) and frequency based efficiency evaluation to gain more precise information and conclusion for the drive design of mobile machines. By the example of an 18 t mobile excavator, the recognition system using Hidden – Markov - Models (HMM) and the efficiency evaluation process by means of backwards simulation of measured operation points will be described.