Scrum Game: An Agile Software Management Game

For the past few years, in their attempt to avoid the heavyweight bureaucracy of traditional project management methods such as the Waterfall model, companies have started incorporating agile methods (e.g. Extreme Programming, Scrum, Crystal) for their project development. These methods are characterised by their incremental and iterative delivery, their ability to incorporate change at any stage of the project lifecycle, as well as their small and co-located teams. Even though these methods are included in the syllabus of many software engineering modules at university level, many students currently feel more confident with traditional, rather than agile methods. Many employers find that recent graduates are not equipped with the desired skills of a software engineer because, even though they are knowledgeable in the different software engineering practices, they lack practical experience of these methods. The combination of these two factors show that the university’s approach to teaching software management methods is only theoretical and it does not give students the opportunity to apply them to their projects so they can get a better understanding of their use. The project developed the prototype of a computer game that simulates the use of the Scrum method within different projects, named Scrum Game. The game is supplementary material for a lecture course, and its purpose is to guide students through the Scrum lifecycle. Students can thereby get a small glimpse of the different phases of Scrum, the way that the different Scrum roles interact with each other, and the way that Scrum is used to implement real projects. In addition, the Scrum Game has an administrator mode enabling lecturers to view a log of the progress of all their students in the game. They can use this mode to create new projects or to alter existing ones by adding new tasks or problems, thereby adjusting the level of difficulty to the level of their students, or so that it fits their teaching. The web-based system was developed using PHP, MySQL, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, AJAX (jQuery) and Google Charts API. The system was thoroughly tested against the initial requirements and other system tests. The Scrum Game was evaluated by 22 peer colleagues reading for an MSc in Software Engineering at the University of Southampton, to identify whether the system achieved its goal of introducing students to the Scrum methodology and reaching a deeper understanding of its practical use during project implementation. The results of a questionnaire showed that little prior knowledge was assumed during the game, and that 86% of the participants felt that the game helped them learn more about Scrum. When asked, “Do you think that if this game was part of your Project Management module, would you get a better understanding about Scrum?” an impressive 95% (21 out of 22 participants) agreed that the game would be helpful, and rated the system 8 out of 10 on average

The implementation of uncertainty evaluation model in manufacturability analysis system for miniature machine tool

The development of Manufacturability Analysis System for micro-machining domain (MicroMAS) is intended to address the need of the 4-axis Miniature Machine Tool (MMT) that require such system to assist the user in generating micro-component through manufacturability evaluation. One of the manufacturability aspects being assessed is the impacts from Uncertainty Evaluation Model (UEM) analysis that analyse the influence of the errors stemmed from the MMT construction on the geometrical accuracy of the machined micro-parts. The model has allowed a methodology for the errors in a custom-made MMT to be predicted and to further understand the origin of the errors on the machined micro-part. This paper reports on the implementation of UEM in the development of MicroMAS. Therefore, the results from uncertainty evaluation towards the MMT were integrated in the database which are interactively searched based on IF-THEN clauses in order to determine which rules satisfy the requirements expressed via inputs

Sticker Application System for Security Office in Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS (SAS)

Car sticker is nowadays is one of the way to protect an industry building or even a university to keep security at a high place. By using sticker, security officer can detect the registered and unregistered vehicle that go in and out of the respective place. With that, the author introduces an online system to apply sticker which is easier and more efficient to be used. Student as user of the system and security officer will act as administrator. User must fill in the form and submit it to the system while administrator will approve or reject the application according to the valid documents attached by the user. In order to achieve the objective and aim, the author must have skill in using PHP language.. Other than that, several interviews and survey has been done to support the relevancy of the project. Moreover, the author also included results and discussion in this report. Last but not least, the author concludes with few recommendations for the improvement of the system

Identifying Distance Learners’ Learning Styles

This study aimed to identify the learning styles of distance learners studying for an associate’s degree in computer programming and child development and to determine whether there is a difference between the departments. Accordingly the survey model was used in this study. The sample consisted of 261 associate’s degree students enrolled in two distance education programs. The data were collected using the E-Learning Styles Scale. In the data analysis, categories were formed using the mean scores on the E-Learning Styles Scale to identify the dominant -e-learning styles of the students and the nonparametric Mann-Whitney U test was used because of The data were not normally distributed. The analysis results showed that the most preferred learning style of computer programming and child development students was the independent e-learning style. The preferred learning styles of computer programming and child development students differed in active learning, social learning, and logical learning styles

CFGP: a web-based, comparative fungal genomics platform

Since the completion of the Saccharomyces cerevisiae genome sequencing project in 1996, the genomes of over 80 fungal species have been sequenced or are currently being sequenced. Resulting data provide opportunities for studying and comparing fungal biology and evolution at the genome level. To support such studies, the Comparative Fungal Genomics Platform (CFGP; http://cfgp.snu.ac.kr), a web-based multifunctional informatics workbench, was developed. The CFGP comprises three layers, including the basal layer, middleware and the user interface. The data warehouse in the basal layer contains standardized genome sequences of 65 fungal species. The middleware processes queries via six analysis tools, including BLAST, ClustalW, InterProScan, SignalP 3.0, PSORT II and a newly developed tool named BLASTMatrix. The BLASTMatrix permits the identification and visualization of genes homologous to a query across multiple species. The Data-driven User Interface (DUI) of the CFGP was built on a new concept of pre-collecting data and post-executing analysis instead of the ‘fill-in-the-form-and-press-SUBMIT’ user interfaces utilized by most bioinformatics sites. A tool termed Favorite, which supports the management of encapsulated sequence data and provides a personalized data repository to users, is another novel feature in the DUI

A Neural Multi-sequence Alignment TeCHnique (NeuMATCH)

The alignment of heterogeneous sequential data (video to text) is an important and challenging problem. Standard techniques for this task, including Dynamic Time Warping (DTW) and Conditional Random Fields (CRFs), suffer from inherent drawbacks. Mainly, the Markov assumption implies that, given the immediate past, future alignment decisions are independent of further history. The separation between similarity computation and alignment decision also prevents end-to-end training. In this paper, we propose an end-to-end neural architecture where alignment actions are implemented as moving data between stacks of Long Short-term Memory (LSTM) blocks. This flexible architecture supports a large variety of alignment tasks, including one-to-one, one-to-many, skipping unmatched elements, and (with extensions) non-monotonic alignment. Extensive experiments on semi-synthetic and real datasets show that our algorithm outperforms state-of-the-art baselines.Comment: Accepted at CVPR 2018 (Spotlight). arXiv file includes the paper and the supplemental materia

Individuals' preferences for GPs Choice analysis from the establishment of a list patient system in Norway

The purpose of this paper is to gain more knowledge concerning individuals’ preferences for alternative GPs within a municipality. We have data on the population’s first, second and third choice of GPs. The data stem from the entry form the inhabitant filled in as a result of the implementation of a list patient system in general practice in Norway. To assess the potential demand for GPs3 or individuals’ request for a position on a certain GP’s list, we formulate and estimate a structural demand model based on probabilistic theories of individual choice behaviour. The model originates from the work of Luce (see for instance Luce, 1959 and Block and Marschak, 1960). Such models are successfully used to obtain knowledge of people’s preferences for different transportation vehicles. We raise the question of whether individuals’ choice of GPs is informed or purely random, as well as the question of whether observable demographic characteristics of a GP can tell us anything about the person who wants him or her as a personal physician. We find systematic dependencies between characteristics of an individual and characteristics of his or her choice of a GP. But we also find that the random part plays a major role in the choice process. In the last part of the paper we discuss policy implications of our findings. Central points are both how local health authorities can use the information on rankings to put together collegiums of GPs that serve the need – or the demand – of the inhabitants in the best way, and how a payment system for GPs should be designed if our results should be taken into account.General practitioner; GP; individual preferences

Content Management System for Personally Driven Web Site

The goal of the project was to develop a simple content management system that could be easily used both as a standalone web application and as a part of a more complex system. The application was supposed to consist of several key modules: commentary engine, search engine, navigation system and authentication system. To create a content management system the implementations of the most common design patterns provided by PHP Zend Framework were used. The application was developed and tested on Ubuntu Linux with Apache web server and MySQL database server. The final version of the project represented a content management system with a navigation system based on item categorization. The application consisted of multiple classes: the ones provided by Zend Framework and the ones created to fulfill application-specific requirements. The system extensively used the benefits of object oriented programming and the model-view-controller design pattern. The results of the project allowed making several conclusions. First, although it is faster to develop the application using the agile programming model, such a technique leads to less optimized code then, if the design of the application was supported by a unified modeling language. Second, object-oriented programming provides the application with a high level of reusability and also makes it possible to employ only certain parts of the software