Sustainability Reporting Process Model using Business Intelligence

Sustainability including the reporting requirements is one of the most relevant topics for companies. In recent years, many software providers have launched new software tools targeting companies committed to implementing sustainability reporting. But it’s not only companies willing to use their Business Intelligence (BI) solution, there are also basic principles such as the single source of truth and tendencies to combine sustainability reporting with the financial reporting (Integrated Reporting) The IT integration of sustainability reporting has received limited attention by scientific research and can be facilitated using BI systems. This has to be done both to anticipate the economic demand for integrated reporting from an IT perspective as well as for ensuring the reporting of revisable data. Through the adaption of BI systems, necessary environmental and social changes can be addressed rather than merely displaying sustainability data from additional, detached systems or generic spreadsheet applications. This thesis presents research in the two domains sustainability reporting and Business Intelligence and provides a method to support companies willing to implement sustainability reporting with BI. SureBI presented within this thesis is developed to address experts from both sustainability and BI. At first BI is researched from a IT and project perspective and a novel BI reporting process is developed. Then, sustainability reporting is researched focusing on the reporting content and a sustainability reporting process is derived. Based on these two reporting processes SureBI is developed, a step-by-step process method, aiming to guide companies through the process of implementing sustainability reporting using their BI environment. Concluding, an evaluation and implementation assesses the suitability and correctness of the process model and exemplarily implements crucial IT tasks of the process. The novel combination of these two topics indicates challenges from both fields. In case of BI, users face problems regarding historically grown systems and lacking implementation strategies. In case of sustainability, the mostly voluntary manner of this reporting leads to an uncertainty as to which indicators have to be reported. The resulting SureBI addresses and highlights these challenges and provides methods for the addressing and prioritization of new stakeholders, the prioritization of the reporting content and describes possibilities to integrate the high amount of estimation figures using BI. Results prove that sustainability reporting could and should be implemented using existing BI solutions

Ensino de gerenciamento de projetos de software mediado por ferramentas

Tese (doutorado) - Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Centro Tecnológico, Programa de Pós-Graduação em Ciência da Computação, Florianópolis, 2017.Projetos de software muitas vezes fracassam por não seguirem um processo de Gerenciamento de Projetos (GP). A adoção deste processo pode ser apoiada pelo uso de ferramentas de GP. Por isto, saber como utilizá-las é uma competência de grande relevância para os egressos dos cursos na área da Computação. Atualmente, observa-se que as unidades instrucionais (UIs) existentes tipicamente incluem aulas práticas para o uso de ferramentas de GP, adotando a estratégia de aprendizagem experiencial. Ainda, algumas UIs fazem uso de ferramentas de GP educacionais, que incluem características didáticas para facilitar a aprendizagem dos alunos. Entretanto, observa-se que estas UIs podem ser melhoradas, abordando lacunas como a cobertura do conteúdo, que tipicamente não abrange áreas de conhecimentos como integração, comunicação, custos, riscos, aquisições, e qualidade. Neste contexto, o objetivo desta tese é cobrir parte das lacunas existentes no ensino de ferramentas de GP, por meio do desenvolvimento de uma UI abordando os processos de iniciação e planejamento alinhando ao PMBOK. A metodologia de pesquisa inclui métodos de revisão bibliográfica para fundamentação teórica, análise do estado da arte e prática por meio de revisão sistemática da literatura e survey, e design instrucional para o desenvolvimento e avaliação da UI. Os resultados desta tese incluem o levantamento do estado da arte e prática do ensino de ferramentas de GP nos cursos superiores de Computação. Entre os resultados também está uma UI para ensino de ferramentas de GP para a iniciação e planejamento, evoluindo a ferramenta dotProject como parte de seus materiais instrucionais. Resultados da avaliação desta UI indicam como ensinar ferramentas de GP alinhado ao guia PMBOK, promovendo a aprendizagem no nível de aplicação do domínio cognitivo da taxonomia de Bloom. Este resultado busca contribuir para Ciência da Computação ao reduzir lacunas existentes no ensino de ferramentas de GP, impactando na melhor formação dos profissionais da área, e possibilitando o aumento do sucesso de projetos conduzidos pelas organizações de software.Abstract : Software projects fail by not adopting a Project Management (PM) process. The adoption of this process is facilitated by PM tools, which take advantage from technology to support the PM process or part of it. The usage of such tools has been considered mandatory to manage the contemporary software projects. Hence, the usage of such tools is an important competency for computer students. Analyzing the state of the art and practice about the teaching of PM tools, it is observed that the existing Instructional Units (IUs) typically adopts the experimental learning strategy, including practical classes for propitiates the usage of PM tools by students. More specifically, some IUs adopt some educational PM tools that include didactic features to improve students learning. However, when analyzing the addressed content by these IUs it is observed that commonly just the time and human resources knowledge areas are addressed, hence existing a gap between what is currently been taught and the complete PM process. In this context, this thesis aims to develop and evaluate an IU for teaching PM tools covering the initiating and planning processes, addressing the 10 PM knowledge areas aligned with PMBOK. The research design includes methods as bibliography review for background definition, Systematic Literature Review (SLR) and survey for state of the art and practice analysis, and an instructional design approach for developing and evaluating the proposed IU. The main result produced by this thesis is the IU, which based on the context analysis, has developed the IU teaching plan and instructional materials compatible with higher computer education in Brazilian institutions. This IU covers a reasonable part of PM tools education, being aligned with PMBOK and addressing topics of curriculums guidelines for computer science higher education. Secondary results include the state of the art analysis which is composed of 2 SLRs, and the state of practice analysis carried out by a survey conducted with teachers that teach about PM tools in higher computers programs. These results may be important for computer science by reducing existing gaps in the teaching of PM tools, thus better preparing computer professionals, and assisting to the success of software projects conducted by Brazilian organizations