Streamlining the Decision-Making Process on Tubular Rigid Busbar Selection During the Planning / Designing Stage by Utilizing 3D Substation BIM Design Software

For Utilities, each substation is regarded as an asset. Managing of assets is one of domains of Asset Management including Life Cycle Costing (LCC) as a decision-making criterion. However, LCC as a decision-making criterion should be applied on an entire substation taking into account all of the potential cost influences for the purpose of achieving of an effective substation management. Asset management as a decision-making process should be observed within a larger context and should be more focused on risk management, as all real decisions include an element of risk due to present uncertainties. Two promising avenues are explored in regards to more comprehensive and rigorous up-front planning through usage of Information Technology (IT). While up-front planning falls under the domain of Lean philosophy, Building Information Modeling (BIM) falls under the category of agile decisionsupport tools. Utilization of both is explored from a perspective of design-uncertainties under both product and process design. Standard specifications and standard designs are another form of applied Lean Philosophy that reduces design-uncertainty and variability. However, a range of technical solutions stemming out of the standardization can be quite wide. Customization involves specification and design of new / innovative designs with wide range of technical solutions as well. Due to external pressures focused on shortening of the project delivery time, there is a need for a faster project time throughput. This is reflected in the form of a requirement for more rapid engineering decision-making and faster decision cycles. Streamlining of a decision-making process related to the engineering is all about engineers’ awareness of the situation from the project level perspective coupled with utilization of decision-support tools for creation and reuse of knowledge. Plan – Do – Study – Orient (PDSO) cycle is a decisionmaking model that supports creation and reusability of knowledge along with providing an explanation in regards to the time dimension relating to decision-making, and as such is presented in this paper. The rigid busbar system design is an iterative process influenced by many factors, defined either as design variables or design constraints. As rigid busbars are gaining more popularity for both greenfield and brownfield investments, the rigid busbar system design is explored from a perspective of decision-making streamlining. The case of the rigid busbar system design of El Chaparral project in El Salvador is given

Towards an Agile Information Systems Development Process Model

Process models are fundamental for structuring Information Systems Development (ISD) endeavors and contribute significantly to ISD projects’ efficiency and effectiveness. On the one hand, agile process models have been increasingly adopted in software development. In general, the agile approach emerged to overcome the limitations of the classical models, such as the late delivery of products or the lack of response to changes. On the other hand, regarding ISD, as far as we know, there are no specific proposals for agile processes. Considering the socio-technical nature of ISD, agile processes cannot be adopted in this context without being adequately tailored. This paper describes an ISD agile process model, underlying principles, and activities. It also discusses the model’s practical feasibility, benefits, and limitations

Co-creation for transdisciplinarity - Adoption of participatory design and agile project management in collaborative research processes

Aquest projecte doctoral explora mètodes de cocreació aplicats a la recerca transdisciplinària. En el context de la societat de la informació, la col·laboració en recerca ha crescut en popularitat entre els equips científics, sota molts enfocaments i formes. Entre aquests, la transdisciplinarietat representa un tipus específic d'activitat científica col·laborativa. La investigació transdisciplinària va més enllà de la col·laboració d'experts de diferents disciplines, ja que també pot involucrar no experts i comunitats no científiques per abordar de manera integral diferents qüestions i problemàtiques, com és el cas de la ciència ciutadana o la recerca acció. La transdisciplinarietat implica processos de recerca complexos i nous desafiaments, com la forma d'abordar la diversitat dels participants, especialment per planificar i gestionar projectes. Aquesta tesi, articulada al voltant d'un compendi de publicacions, explora fins a quin punt i en quina mesura les metodologies de cocreació poden contribuir a abordar aquests desafiaments, en diferents contextos i fases de la recerca transdisciplinària.Este proyecto de doctorado explora métodos de cocreación aplicados a la investigación transdisciplinaria. En el contexto de la sociedad de la información, la colaboración en investigación ha crecido en popularidad entre equipos científicos, bajo muchos enfoques y formas. Entre ellos, la transdisciplinariedad representa un tipo específico de actividad científica colaborativa. La investigación transdisciplinaria va más allá de la colaboración de expertos de diferentes disciplinas, ya que también puede involucrar a no expertos y comunidades no científicas para abordar de manera integral diferentes cuestiones y problemáticas, como en el caso de la ciencia ciudadana o la investigación acción. La transdisciplinariedad implica procesos de investigación complejos y nuevos desafíos, como la forma de abordar la diversidad de los participantes, especialmente para planificar y gestionar proyectos. Esta tesis explora hasta qué punto y en qué medida las metodologías de cocreación pueden contribuir a abordar estos desafíos, en diferentes contextos y fases de la investigación transdisciplinaria.Collaborative research in the network society has taken on a number of approaches and forms and has grown in popularity among scientific teams. One specific example of this is transdisciplinary research, which not only depends on the collaboration of experts from different disciplines, but also turns to non-experts and non-scientific communities of stakeholders in order to holistically address a range of different problems and issues, as is the case with citizen science and action research. Transdisciplinarity encompasses complex research processes and faces new challenges, such as how to deal with participant diversity, especially in terms of project planning and management. This doctoral thesis, founded upon a compendium of previous research, explores if and to what extent co-creation methodologies can aid in overcoming these challenges in different contexts and phases of transdisciplinary research

Utilising the Software Engineering Methods and Theory framework to critically evaluate software engineering practice in the South African banking industry

A research report submitted to the Faculty of Engineering and The Built Environment of the University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg In partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Science in Engineering September 2015In recent years, software has become the cornerstone of banking and new business products are directly dependant on software. The delivery cycles for new features is now related to market share. This drive to use software as a vehicle for competitive advantage has created an environment in which software development of new business systems are increasingly on the critical path of many projects. An organisation’s portfolio of software intensive projects is situated within this complexity and organisations attempt to mitigate the risks associated with these complexities by implementing software development processes and practices. A key problem facing the modern bank is how to define and build a software development process that caters for both the traditional and increasingly agile genres of software development characteristics in a consistent and manageable way. The banks attempt to address this problem through continuous methodology and process improvements. Comparing and assessing non-standardised software engineering lifecycle models without a common framework is a complex and subjective task. A standardised language is important for simplifying the task for developing new methods and practices or for analysing and documenting existing practices. The Software Engineering Methods and Theory (SEMAT) initiative has developed a standardised kernel of essential concepts, together with a language that describes the essence of software engineering. This kernel, called the Essence, has recently become an Object Management Group (OMG) standard. The Essence kernel, together with its language, can be used as the underpinning theory to analyse an existing method and help provide insights that can drive method enhancements. The research report proposes a simple, actionable analysis framework to assist organisations to assess, review and develop their software engineering methods. The core concepts of the methodology are identified and mapped to the Essence concepts. The governance model of the Essence is mapped to the governance model of the industry model and a set of practices is identified and documented in the Essence language. The mapping and resulting analysis can be used to test the validity of the Essence theory in practice and identify areas for improvement in both the method and the Essence standard. The analysis framework has been applied to an operational software development lifecycle of a large South African bank. A mapping of the Essence concepts to the governance model and method documented in the lifecycle was completed. This mapping revealed that the Essence is a valid tool and can be used to describe a method in practice. Furthermore it is useful as an analysis framework to assess the governance model that manages and measures the progress of an endeavour in the Bank. The case study and resulting analysis demonstrate that the Essence standard can be used to analyse a methodology and identify areas for improvement. The analysis also identified areas for improvement in the Essence specification

HydroShare – A Case Study of the Application of Modern Software Engineering to a Large Distributed Federally-Funded Scientific Software Development Project

HydroShare is an online collaborative system under development to support the open sharing of hydrologic data, analytical tools, and computer models. With HydroShare, scientists can easily discover, access, and analyze hydrologic data and thereby enhance the production and reproducibility of hydrologic scientific results. HydroShare also takes advantage of emerging social media functionality to enable users to enhance information about and collaboration around hydrologic data and models. HydroShare is being developed by an interdisciplinary collaborative team of domain scientists, university software developers, and professional software engineers from ten institutions located across the United States. While the combination of non–co-located, diverse stakeholders presents communication and management challenges, the interdisciplinary nature of the team is integral to the project’s goal of improving scientific software development and capabilities in academia. This chapter describes the challenges faced and lessons learned with the development of HydroShare, as well as the approach to software development that the HydroShare team adopted on the basis of the lessons learned. The chapter closes with recommendations for the application of modern software engineering techniques to large, collaborative, scientific software development projects, similar to the National Science Foundation (NSF)–funded HydroShare, in order to promote the successful application of the approach described herein by other teams for other projects

Applying scrum to interior design and construction

For decades, product development has been accomplished through defined processes, such as waterfall (Royce, 1970). Defined processes are those that have known inputs, repeatable processes, and expected outputs. The assumption that innovation in product development can be achieved through repeatable processes has resulted in most projects being completed over budget, over schedule, not meeting user needs, or some combination thereof (Sherman, 2015). Accommodating change and learning in a defined process is expensive. Construction and interior design projects have followed a similar defined framework of assessing requirements, planning, estimation, execution, and post-occupancy evaluations. This has resulted in projects delivered late, projects delivered over budget, waste and rework, unreliable teams, and unsatisfied clients (Lean Construction Institute, 2022). Solving complex problems require empirical processes to meet user needs. Empirical processes incorporate change and learning throughout the project lifecycle and are based on three pillars: transparency, inspection, and adaptation. This research will focus on the application of an empirical framework, namely Scrum (Schwaber, SCRUM Development Process, 1995), to construction and interior design projects. “Scrum is a lightweight framework that helps people, teams and organizations generate value through adaptive solutions for complex problems.” (Schwaber & Sutherland, The 2020 Scrum Guide, 2020, p. 3) This study utilizes a case study and survey revealing that Scrum can be utilized to deliver more value to clients, increase transparency, reduce risk, and enhance employee engagement amongst project teams. Findings highlight changes that can be made in the interior design and construction industry to achieve these results.Thesis (M.S.

Development of a framework to understand the factors that influence software productivity in agile teams

Productivity improvement in the software industry is one of the major challenges facing many software development companies in this century. Most companies have adopted agile methodologies in order to profit from the benefits claimed for them. Agile methodologies are characterised by frequent software delivery, short feedback loops, quicker response to change, and problem identification earlier in the development process. The agile approach has been recognised as paving a way for companies to acquire higher software productivity, delivering good-quality and cost-effective software, enabling software development companies to respond to business challenges with their demands for high quality, high performance and high development speed in delivering the final product. For companies that adopt agile methodologies, understanding the factors that influence their teams’ software development productivity is a challenging task for management and practitioners today. In this research, an analysis is presented that identifies productivity factors that affect agile teams. It is a study of agile methods to identify common agile practices and/or values that have impact on productivity, and describes suitable metrics that could be used to measure agile team productivity. A qualitative research approach was used, and the case study was chosen as the research strategy. Two South African companies that are located in two different provinces and that adopted agile methodologies in their software development, were selected for the case studies. Qualitative content analysis was used in the research to permit subjective interpretation of factors that influence agile team productivity, and to analyse to what extent these factors affected productivity. This research has shown that an understanding of the factors that influence an agile team’s productivity gives significant insight into the way agile teams work, motivates team members to work together, and leads to uniform metrics in tracking each team’s progress. The study indicates that tracking an agile team’s work and providing adequate tools needed to execute their tasks results in improving agile team productivity. It should be recognised that using metrics to measure performance in agile teams is helpful in creating a team’s culture and trust. In this study, it was found that the factors identified in both literature and case studies affected productivity in the two companies under study, both positively and negatively. The study also found that applying the correct metrics in assessing, analysing and reviewing an agile team’s performance is important when monitoring productivity. Successful software delivery is only possible if individuals are committed to their work, are provided with the necessary tools and have access to a stable working environment. In addition, individual factors such as knowledge, skills, abilities, personalities and experience should be considered when forming agile teams. Consideration of these factors will result in grouping people that are able to work together and achieve a common goal, which is important in improving productivity. A conceptual framework for agile team productivity was proposed. The discussion of the findings is presented in more detail in this research.School of ComputingM.Sc. (Computing

analyzing the instability of the core components of software projects

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