Agile software development in a context of plan-based organizations

Agile software development has increasingly been used in the last fifteen years with the goal of improving traditionally time-consuming and rather non-user friendly process of developing software code. As implications of agile development and its impact on employees are still unclear, it is important to understand the benefits, opportunities and limitations of this development or collaboration mechanism. Thus, empirical evidence with implications for decision makers in the field of corporate policy and software development is an open research field. This master thesis analyzes the potentials of agile software development and how this approach can be used to support the development processes in companies, in terms of efficiency, shorter time-to-market as well as better customer fit of the developed products or services. By exploring some of the key features of different methods and processes, the potentials and limitations of the selected approaches are analyzed and linked to recent literature insights

Agile software development in a context of plan-based organizations

Agile software development has increasingly been used in the last fifteen years with the goal of improving traditionally time-consuming and rather non-user friendly process of developing software code. As implications of agile development and its impact on employees are still unclear, it is important to understand the benefits, opportunities and limitations of this development or collaboration mechanism. Thus, empirical evidence with implications for decision makers in the field of corporate policy and software development is an open research field. This master thesis analyzes the potentials of agile software development and how this approach can be used to support the development processes in companies, in terms of efficiency, shorter time-to-market as well as better customer fit of the developed products or services. By exploring some of the key features of different methods and processes, the potentials and limitations of the selected approaches are analyzed and linked to recent literature insights

THE REALISM OF ALGORITHMIC HUMAN FIGURES A Study of Selected Examples 1964 to 2001

It is more than forty years since the first wireframe images of the Boeing Man revealed a stylized hu-man pilot in a simulated pilot's cabin. Since then, it has almost become standard to include scenes in Hollywood movies which incorporate virtual human actors. A trait particularly recognizable in the games industry world-wide is the eagerness to render athletic muscular young men, and young women with hour-glass body-shapes, to traverse dangerous cyberworlds as invincible heroic figures. Tremendous efforts in algorithmic modeling, animation and rendering are spent to produce a realistic and believable appearance of these algorithmic humans. This thesis develops two main strands of research by the interpreting a selection of examples. Firstly, in the computer graphics context, over the forty years, it documents the development of the creation of the naturalistic appearance of images (usually called photorealism ). In particular, it de-scribes and reviews the impact of key algorithms in the course of the journey of the algorithmic human figures towards realism . Secondly, taking a historical perspective, this work provides an analysis of computer graphics in relation to the concept of realism. A comparison of realistic images of human figures throughout history with their algorithmically-generated counterparts allows us to see that computer graphics has both learned from previous and contemporary art movements such as photorealism but also taken out-of-context elements, symbols and properties from these art movements with a questionable naivety. Therefore, this work also offers a critique of the justification of the use of their typical conceptualization in computer graphics. Although the astounding technical achievements in the field of algorithmically-generated human figures are paralleled by an equally astounding disregard for the history of visual culture, from the beginning 1964 till the breakthrough 2001, in the period of the digital information processing machine, a new approach has emerged to meet the apparently incessant desire of humans to create artificial counterparts of themselves. Conversely, the theories of traditional realism have to be extended to include new problems that those active algorithmic human figures present

Technofetishism of posthuman bodies: representations of cyborgs, ghosts, and monsters in contemporary Japanese science fiction film and animation

The thesis uses a feminist approach to explore the representation of the cyborg in Japanese film and animation in relation to gender, the body, and national identity. Whereas the figure of the cyborg is predominantly pervasive in cinematic science fiction, the Japanese popular imagination of cyborgs not only crosses cinematic genre boundaries between monster, disaster, horror, science fiction, and fantasy but also crosses over to the medium of animation. In regard to the academic research on Japanese cinema and animation, there is a serious gap in articulating concepts such as live-action film, animation, gender, and the cyborg. This thesis, therefore, intends to fill the gap by investigating the gendered cyborg through a feminist lens to understand the interplay between gender, the body and the cyborg within historical-social contexts. Consequently, the questions proposed below are the starting point to reassess the relationship between Japanese cinema, animation, and the cyborg. How has Japanese popular culture been obsessed with the figure of the cyborg? What is the relationship between Japanese live-action film and Japanese animation in terms of the popular imagination of the cyborg? In particular, how might we discuss the representation of the cyborg in relation to the concept of national identity and the associated ideology of “Japaneseness”, within the framework of Donna Haraway’s influential cyborg theory and feminist theory? The questions are addressed in the four sections of the thesis to explore the representation of the gendered cyborg. First, I outline the concept of the cyborg as it has been developed in relation to notions of gender and the ‘cyborg’ in Western theory. Secondly, I explore the issues in theorising the science fiction genre in Japanese cinema and animation and then address the problem of defining science fiction in relation to the phenomenon of the cyborg’s genre-crossing. Finally, I provide a contextualising discussion of gender politics and gender roles in Japan in order to justify my use of Western feminist theory as well as discuss the strengths and limitations of such an approach before moving, in the remainder of the thesis, to an examination of a number of case studies drawn from Japanese cinema and animation

Exploring the Land of Ooo: An Unofficial Overview and Production History of Cartoon Network's Adventure Time

Exploring the Land of Ooo is a detailed consideration of Adventure Time, the colorful and exuberant animated television series that initially aired from 2010–18 on Cartoon Network. Created by visionary artist Pendleton Ward, the series was groundbreaking and is credited by many with heralding in a new golden age of animation. In this book, author Paul Thomas presents a thorough overview of the series, explicating the nuances of its characters, its production history, its storytelling methods, and its vibrant fandom. Based in part on interviews with dozens of the creative individuals who made the show possible, this book aims to ensure that, when it comes to Adventure Time, the fun truly will never end

Creative Business in Australia Learnings from the Creative Industries Innovation Centre, 2009 To 2015

As the largest ever Australian government investment in creative industries development, the Creative Industries Innovation Centre delivered tailored business services to more than 1500 creative businesses from 2009 to 2015 and provided industry intelligence and advice for public policy and peak sectoral activity. This collection gives an overview of the current ‘state of business’ in Australia’s creative industries – both as an industry sector in its own right and as an enabling sector and skills set for other industries – and reflects on business needs, creative industries policy and support services for the sector. With contributions from the Centre’s team of senior business advisers and from leading Australian researchers who worked closely with the Centre –including experts on design-led innovation and the creative economy – and case studies of leading Australia creative businesses, the book is intended as and industry-relevant contribution to business development and public policy

Proceedings of the 2nd Int'l Workshop on Enterprise Modelling and Information Systems Architectures - Concepts and Applications (EMISA'07)

The 2nd International Workshop on “Enterprise Modelling and Information Systems Architectures – Concepts and Applications” (EMISA’07) addresses all aspects relevant for enterprise modelling as well as for designing enterprise architectures in general and information systems architectures in particular. It was jointly organized by the GI Special Interest Group on Modelling Business Information Systems (GI-SIG MoBIS) and the GI Special Interest Group on Design Methods for Information Systems (GI-SIG EMISA). -- These proceedings feature a selection of 15 high quality contributions from academia and practice on enterprise architecture models, business processes management, information systems engineering, and other important issues in enterprise modelling and information systems architectures

You Can\u27t Get There from Here: Movement SF and the Picaresque

This dissertation examines the crisis of authenticity in postmodern culture and argues that contemporary science fiction, specifically the subgenre of Movement SF, has evolved a unique answer to this crisis by adopting, perhaps spontaneously, the picaresque narrative structure. Postmodern fiction has a tenuous relationship with the issue of authenticity, such that the average postmodern subject is utterly without true authenticity at all, alternately victim to the socioeconomic conditions of his or her culture and to the elision of the self as a result of the homogenizing effects of advertising, television, etc. Postmodern SF also carries this bleak perception of the possibility of agency; William Gibson\u27s Sprawl and Bridge trilogies are rife with negations of human agency at the metaphorical hands of various aspects and incarnations of what Fredric Jameson terms the technological sublime. This dissertation puts forth the argument that a group of post-Eighties SF texts all participate in a spontaneous revival of the picaresque mode, using the picaresque journey and related motifs to re-authenticate subjects whose identity and agency are being erased by powerful social and economic forces exterior to and normally imperceptible by the individual. This dissertation is organized around three loosely connected parts. Part 1 attempts to define Movement SF by separating the various, often confusing marketing labels (such as cyberpunk, postcyberpunk, etc.) and extracting a cluster of core characteristics that have shaped the genre since its inception in the early 80s. Part 1 further examines how these core characteristics (or premises) of Movement SF provide fertile ground for picaresque narrative strategies. Part 2 describes in detail the picaresque as it appears in Movement SF, examining worldbuilding strategies, the persistence and evolution of tropes and motifs common to the traditional picaresque, and the generation of new tropes and motifs unique to Movement picaresques. Part 3 examines the spatial tactics used in Movement picaresque narratives to enable picaresque marginality in totalized, globalized environments. Furthermore, Part 3 examines the use of psychological plurality as an internal tactic to escape closed environments