A Structured Systemic Framework for Software Development

The purpose of this research was to develop and apply a systems-based framework for the analysis of software development project performance. Software development project performance is measured at the project level; that is, cost, schedule, and product quality that affect the overall project. To date, most performance improvement efforts have been focused on individual processes within the overall software development system. Making improvements to sub-elements, processes, or sub-systems without regard for the overall project is a classic misbehavior entered into by practitioners who fail to use a holistic, systemic approach. Attempts to improve sub-system behavior are at odds with The Principle of Sub-optimization. (van Gigch, 1974) The traditional method of predicting software development project performance, in terms of sub-system performance is too restrictive. A new holistic, systemic view based on systems principles offers a more robust way to look at performance. This research addressed this gap in the systems and software body of knowledge by developing a generalizable and transportable framework for software project performance that is based on systems principles. A rigorous mixed-method research methodology, employing both inductive and case study methods, was used to develop and validate the framework. Two research questions were identified as integral to increasing the understanding of a systems-based framework. (1) How does systems theory apply to the analysis of software development project performance? (2) What results from the application of a systems-based analysis framework for analyzing performance on a software development project? Using Discoverers\u27 Induction (Whewell, 1858), a systems-based framework for the analysis of software development project performance was constructed, adding to the systems and software body of knowledge and substantiating a comprehensive and unambiguous theoretical construct for software development. Then, the framework was applied to two completed software development projects to support validation. The structured systemic framework shows significant promise for contribution to software practitioners by indicating future software development project performance. The research also made a contribution in the area of research methodologies by resurrecting William Whewell\u27s Discoverers\u27 Induction (1858) and furthering the use of the case study method in the engineering management and systems engineering domain, areas where their application has been very limited

Astrological consulting in the area of business consulting – an empirical investigation into the applicability upon the background of systems thinking

The starting point for this research study is the application of astrological consulting in the area of business consultancy. In many Western civilisations there is considerable prejudice regarding astrological consulting especially when it is active in the area of business consultancy. In contrast to this, astrological business consulting is encountered much more commonly in Asia and the USA, where it is not unusual that enterprises enquire for astrological consulting service. The research aims to investigate the applicability of astrological consulting in the domain of business counselling within a context of economic sociology. Management consulting has been used as a reference concept of business consultancy. The realm of systems thinking is considered to be suitable as the theoretical framework for this research. The systems methodology of the Networked Thinking approach of the interpretive tradition has been used to determine the systems of astrological business consulting as well as that of management consulting. This research proposes that, from a system-theoretical view or, let us say, from a technical-oriented perspective on management, astrological business consulting as compared with management consulting is not an applicable and justifiable consultancy concept in the area of business consulting. The research methodology used aims to set up a direct confrontation between the system of astrological business consulting and that of management consulting. For this purpose the thesis has been broken down into five stages. In the first stage each of the two consulting concepts was theoretically developed as a hypothesis on the basis of a comprehensive review of the literature with the aim of determining its systems structure. In this stage of theory-building, an exploratory as well as a descriptive type of research was employed. By applying an exploratory research type, the author’s intention is to look for ideas and patterns in order to construct the systems of reference as hypotheses. This research type has been supported to an even greater extent by a descriptive type to identify and classify the structure of each of the systems. Hence an inductive and a basic research approach are embedded in this first stage of the research process. The secondary data collection involves a mixture of qualitative and quantitative approaches. The knowledge acquired from this secondary data collection comes from multi-disciplinary but scientific sources. In the second stage of the research process the structure of each of the two systems derived from literature was statistically verified and modified where necessary. In the third stage, subsequent to the statistical verification, the two hypotheses were tested in practice. The primary data collection represents a deductive and a quantitative research approach mixed with qualitative components by using survey research as a suitable research method. The Delphi technique is regarded as appropriate to be employed as a data collection tool. Astrological and management consulting experts were contacted by a questionnaire procedure to achieve consensus with regard to the structure of each of these two consulting systems. Prior to this survey procedure, the questionnaires were subject to a pilot testing. The analysis of the findings from the primary data collection required modifications in each of the two consulting systems with regard to their systems structure. In stage four the two system models theoretically derived from the literature were compared with the empirical data. Subsequent to this comparison, in stage five, the two consulting systems empirically validated were confronted with each other by comparing their determinants

Complex systems analysis and environmental modeling

Through the algorthmic design patterns of data parallelism and task parallelism, the graphics processing unit (GPU) offers the potential to vastly accelerate discovery and innovation across a multitude of disciplines. For example, the exponential growth in data volume now presents an obstacle for high-throughput data mining in fields such as neuroinformatics and bioinformatics. As such, we present a characterization of a MapReduce-based data-mining application on a general-purpose GPU (GPGPU). Using neuroscience as the application vehicle, the results of our multi-dimensional performance evaluation show that a “one-size-fits-all” approach maps poorly across different GPGPU cards. Rather, a high-performance implementation on the GPGPU should factor in the 1) problem size, 2) type of GPU, 3) type of algorithm, and 4) data-access method when determining the type and level of parallelism. To guide the GPGPU programmer towards optimal performance within such a broad design space, we provide eight general performance characterizations of our data-mining application