118,997 research outputs found
Addressing challenges to teach traditional and agile project management in academia
In order to prepare students for a professional IT career, most universities attempt to provide a current
educational curriculum in the Project Management (PM) area to their students. This is usually based on
the most promising methodologies used by the software industry. As instructors, we need to balance
traditional methodologies focused on proven project planning and control processes leveraging widely
accepted methods and tools along with the newer agile methodologies. Such new frameworks
emphasize that software delivery should be done in a flexible and iterative manner and with significant
collaboration with product owners and customers. In our experience agile methodologies have
witnessed an exponential growth in many diverse software organizations, and the various agile PM tools
and techniques will continue to see an increase in adoption in the software development sector.
Reflecting on these changes, there is a critical need to accommodate best practices and current methodologies in our courses that deliver Project Management content. In this paper we analyse two of the most widely used methodologies for traditional and agile software development – the widely used
ISO/PMBOK standard provided by the Project Management Institute and the well-accepted Scrum
framework. We discuss how to overcome curriculum challenges and deliver a quality undergraduate PM
course for a Computer Science and Information systems curricula. Based on our teaching experience
in Europe and North America, we present a comprehensive comparison of the two approaches. Our research covers the main concepts, processes, and roles associated with the two PM frameworks and recommended learning outcomes. The paper should be of value to instructors who are keen to see their computing students graduate with a sound understanding of current PM methodologies and who can deliver real-world software products.Accepted manuscrip
A Comparative Analysis of Phytovolume Estimation Methods Based on UAV-Photogrammetry and Multispectral Imagery in a Mediterranean Forest
Management and control operations are crucial for preventing forest fires, especially in Mediterranean forest areas with dry climatic periods. One of them is prescribed fires, in which the biomass fuel present in the controlled plot area must be accurately estimated. The most used methods for estimating biomass are time-consuming and demand too much manpower. Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) carrying multispectral sensors can be used to carry out accurate indirect measurements of terrain and vegetation morphology and their radiometric characteristics. Based on the UAV-photogrammetric project products, four estimators of phytovolume were compared in a Mediterranean forest area, all obtained using the difference between a digital surface model (DSM) and a digital terrain model (DTM). The DSM was derived from a UAV-photogrammetric project based on the structure from a motion algorithm. Four different methods for obtaining a DTM were used based on an unclassified dense point cloud produced through a UAV-photogrammetric project (FFU), an unsupervised classified dense point cloud (FFC), a multispectral vegetation index (FMI), and a cloth simulation filter (FCS). Qualitative and quantitative comparisons determined the ability of the phytovolume estimators for vegetation detection and occupied volume. The results show that there are no significant differences in surface vegetation detection between all the pairwise possible comparisons of the four estimators at a 95% confidence level, but FMI presented the best kappa value (0.678) in an error matrix analysis with reference data obtained from photointerpretation and supervised classification. Concerning the accuracy of phytovolume estimation, only FFU and FFC presented differences higher than two standard deviations in a pairwise comparison, and FMI presented the best RMSE (12.3 m) when the estimators were compared to 768 observed data points grouped in four 500 m2 sample plots. The FMI was the best phytovolume estimator of the four compared for low vegetation height in a Mediterranean forest. The use of FMI based on UAV data provides accurate phytovolume estimations that can be applied on several environment management activities, including wildfire prevention. Multitemporal phytovolume estimations based on FMI could help to model the forest resources evolution in a very realistic way
A Quantitative Assessment of Forest Cover Change in the Moulouya River Watershed (Morocco) by the Integration of a Subpixel-Based and Object-Based Analysis of Landsat Data
A quantitative assessment of forest cover change in the Moulouya River watershed (Morocco) was carried out by means of an innovative approach from atmospherically corrected reflectance Landsat images corresponding to 1984 (Landsat 5 Thematic Mapper) and 2013 (Landsat 8 Operational Land Imager). An object-based image analysis (OBIA) was undertaken to classify segmented objects as forested or non-forested within the 2013 Landsat orthomosaic. A Random Forest classifier was applied to a set of training data based on a features vector composed of different types of object features such as vegetation indices, mean spectral values and pixel-based fractional cover derived from probabilistic spectral mixture analysis). The very high spatial resolution image data of Google Earth 2013 were employed to train/validate the Random Forest classifier, ranking the NDVI vegetation index and the corresponding pixel-based percentages of photosynthetic vegetation and bare soil as the most statistically significant object features to extract forested and non-forested areas. Regarding classification accuracy, an overall accuracy of 92.34% was achieved. The previously developed classification scheme was applied to the 1984 Landsat data to extract the forest cover change between 1984 and 2013, showing a slight net increase of 5.3% (ca. 8800 ha) in forested areas for the whole region
Measuring Software Process: A Systematic Mapping Study
Context: Measurement is essential to reach predictable performance and high capability processes. It provides
support for better understanding, evaluation, management, and control of the development process
and project, as well as the resulting product. It also enables organizations to improve and predict its process’s
performance, which places organizations in better positions to make appropriate decisions. Objective:
This study aims to understand the measurement of the software development process, to identify studies,
create a classification scheme based on the identified studies, and then to map such studies into the scheme
to answer the research questions. Method: Systematic mapping is the selected research methodology for this
study. Results: A total of 462 studies are included and classified into four topics with respect to their focus
and into three groups based on the publishing date. Five abstractions and 64 attributes were identified,
25 methods/models and 17 contexts were distinguished. Conclusion: capability and performance were the
most measured process attributes, while effort and performance were the most measured project attributes.
Goal Question Metric and Capability Maturity Model Integration were the main methods and models used
in the studies, whereas agile/lean development and small/medium-size enterprise were the most frequently
identified research contexts.Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad TIN2013-46928-C3-3-RMinisterio de Economía y Competitividad TIN2016-76956-C3-2- RMinisterio de Economía y Competitividad TIN2015-71938-RED
Tahap penguasaan, sikap dan minat pelajar Kolej Kemahiran Tinggi MARA terhadap mata pelajaran Bahasa Inggeris
Kajian ini dilakukan untuk mengenal pasti tahap penguasaan, sikap dan minat pelajar
Kolej Kemahiran Tinggi Mara Sri Gading terhadap Bahasa Inggeris. Kajian yang
dijalankan ini berbentuk deskriptif atau lebih dikenali sebagai kaedah tinjauan. Seramai
325 orang pelajar Diploma in Construction Technology dari Kolej Kemahiran Tinggi
Mara di daerah Batu Pahat telah dipilih sebagai sampel dalam kajian ini. Data yang
diperoleh melalui instrument soal selidik telah dianalisis untuk mendapatkan
pengukuran min, sisihan piawai, dan Pekali Korelasi Pearson untuk melihat hubungan
hasil dapatan data. Manakala, frekuensi dan peratusan digunakan bagi mengukur
penguasaan pelajar. Hasil dapatan kajian menunjukkan bahawa tahap penguasaan
Bahasa Inggeris pelajar adalah berada pada tahap sederhana manakala faktor utama yang
mempengaruhi penguasaan Bahasa Inggeris tersebut adalah minat diikuti oleh sikap.
Hasil dapatan menggunakan pekali Korelasi Pearson juga menunjukkan bahawa terdapat
hubungan yang signifikan antara sikap dengan penguasaan Bahasa Inggeris dan antara
minat dengan penguasaan Bahasa Inggeris. Kajian menunjukkan bahawa semakin positif
sikap dan minat pelajar terhadap pengajaran dan pembelajaran Bahasa Inggeris semakin
tinggi pencapaian mereka. Hasil daripada kajian ini diharapkan dapat membantu pelajar
dalam meningkatkan penguasaan Bahasa Inggeris dengan memupuk sikap positif dalam
diri serta meningkatkan minat mereka terhadap Bahasa Inggeris dengan lebih baik. Oleh
itu, diharap kajian ini dapat memberi panduan kepada pihak-pihak yang terlibat dalam
membuat kajian yang akan datang
Survey on Additive Manufacturing, Cloud 3D Printing and Services
Cloud Manufacturing (CM) is the concept of using manufacturing resources in a
service oriented way over the Internet. Recent developments in Additive
Manufacturing (AM) are making it possible to utilise resources ad-hoc as
replacement for traditional manufacturing resources in case of spontaneous
problems in the established manufacturing processes. In order to be of use in
these scenarios the AM resources must adhere to a strict principle of
transparency and service composition in adherence to the Cloud Computing (CC)
paradigm. With this review we provide an overview over CM, AM and relevant
domains as well as present the historical development of scientific research in
these fields, starting from 2002. Part of this work is also a meta-review on
the domain to further detail its development and structure
The permafrost carbon inventory on the Tibetan Plateau : a new evaluation using deep sediment cores
Acknowledgements We are grateful for Dr. Jens Strauss and the other two anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments on an earlier version of this MS, and appreciate members of the IBCAS Sampling Campaign Teams for their assistance in field investigation. This work was supported by the National Basic Research Program of China on Global Change (2014CB954001 and 2015CB954201), National Natural Science Foundation of China (31322011 and 41371213), and the Thousand Young Talents Program.Peer reviewedPostprin
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