Continuous Rationale Management

Continuous Software Engineering (CSE) is a software life cycle model open to frequent changes in requirements or technology. During CSE, software developers continuously make decisions on the requirements and design of the software or the development process. They establish essential decision knowledge, which they need to document and share so that it supports the evolution and changes of the software. The management of decision knowledge is called rationale management. Rationale management provides an opportunity to support the change process during CSE. However, rationale management is not well integrated into CSE. The overall goal of this dissertation is to provide workflows and tool support for continuous rationale management. The dissertation contributes an interview study with practitioners from the industry, which investigates rationale management problems, current practices, and features to support continuous rationale management beneficial for practitioners. Problems of rationale management in practice are threefold: First, documenting decision knowledge is intrusive in the development process and an additional effort. Second, the high amount of distributed decision knowledge documentation is difficult to access and use. Third, the documented knowledge can be of low quality, e.g., outdated, which impedes its use. The dissertation contributes a systematic mapping study on recommendation and classification approaches to treat the rationale management problems. The major contribution of this dissertation is a validated approach for continuous rationale management consisting of the ConRat life cycle model extension and the comprehensive ConDec tool support. To reduce intrusiveness and additional effort, ConRat integrates rationale management activities into existing workflows, such as requirements elicitation, development, and meetings. ConDec integrates into standard development tools instead of providing a separate tool. ConDec enables lightweight capturing and use of decision knowledge from various artifacts and reduces the developers' effort through automatic text classification, recommendation, and nudging mechanisms for rationale management. To enable access and use of distributed decision knowledge documentation, ConRat defines a knowledge model of decision knowledge and other artifacts. ConDec instantiates the model as a knowledge graph and offers interactive knowledge views with useful tailoring, e.g., transitive linking. To operationalize high quality, ConRat introduces the rationale backlog, the definition of done for knowledge documentation, and metrics for intra-rationale completeness and decision coverage of requirements and code. ConDec implements these agile concepts for rationale management and a knowledge dashboard. ConDec also supports consistent changes through change impact analysis. The dissertation shows the feasibility, effectiveness, and user acceptance of ConRat and ConDec in six case study projects in an industrial setting. Besides, it comprehensively analyses the rationale documentation created in the projects. The validation indicates that ConRat and ConDec benefit CSE projects. Based on the dissertation, continuous rationale management should become a standard part of CSE, like automated testing or continuous integration

Market Structure and Energy Efficiency: The Case of New Commercial Buildings

This is a report on why commercial office buildings aren’t more energy efficient. Several decades of energy efficiency programs have resulted in some gains, but overall increases in the energy efficiency of buildings have fallen far short of the 30 to 50 percent improvement that many efficiency advocates believe is possible. The purpose of this study is to consider the “why” question by empirically examining the dynamics of new commercial building markets. To do so, the authors used multiple research techniques, including qualitative field observation and interview methods that allow for a more in-depth understanding of complicated market processes. Their research focused primarily on new office buildings and centered in four regional markets: Sacramento, San Francisco, Seattle, and Portland. The authors identify key dynamics of commercial office building markets, describe how change and innovation occurs in commercial development, discuss the implications for energy efficiency, and suggest next steps

Copyright Misuse: Protecting Copyright in Canada from Overreach and Abuse

Faced with a rapidly evolving technological landscape—one in which near-perfect copies of digital content can be created and disseminated with minimal cost and unprecedented ease—copyright owners have sought to exercise greater control over expressive works. In many cases, they have undertaken this task by harnessing the very same technological forces that threaten to disrupt their traditional business models: monitoring online activity and responding to potentially infringing uses with thousands of cease- and-desist letters; licensing rather than selling digital works; or locking down content with technological access and control measures. These attempts at enhanced protection merit concern because their effectiveness is, for the most part, not limited by the scope of rights granted to copyright owners under the Copyright Act. Unrestrained by copyright\u27s statutory limits (including the restriction against copyrighting works in the public domain) and internal safety- valves (such as fair dealing), content holders are now able to routinely overreach the boundaries of copyright law and abuse their limited statutory grant of rights in copyrighted works. This behaviour, which I refer to generally as “overreach and abuse,” can be classified into two broad categories. The first category includes protective measures that, although procedurally valid, cannot ultimately be substantiated in law. Labelled by commentators as “copyfraud,” these actions involve content holders increasingly laying claim to rights in expressive works that have little or no basis in copyright law. Backed by threats of litigation, these spurious claims often go uncontested due to the power imbalance existing between owner and user groups. The second category includes protective measures that are substantively legal, but entirely divorced from the statutory domain of copyright law. Contractual agreements—many of which are subject to considerable inequality of bargaining power—and an array of technological protection measures or “digital locks”—which can be further supported by anti-circumvention laws—are being employed with increasing frequency by content owners. The result is a comprehensive system of legally enforceable barriers to expressive works that often trump copyright law, the terms of which are set almost entirely by private entities. Taken together, these two categories of behaviour not only tip the balance in favour of content holders, rendering users\u27 rights such as fair dealing largely ineffectual, but also threaten to marginalize the application and therefore relevancy of copyright law as a whole. Increasingly, copyright is being displaced by a comprehensive “privately defined rights regime.” In response to this trend, courts, copyright users and legal scholars have begun to look outside the statutory confines of copyright law in the hope of identifying legal tools capable of restoring a degree of balance to the regulation and control of expressive works. One avenue currently being pursued in the United States is the doctrine of copyright misuse, an equitable defence to copyright infringement that arises when a copyright owner has “misused” his or her copyright. Where the Copyright Act is silent or unable to prevent content holders from overstepping the bounds of copyright law, the doctrine of copyright misuse provides owners with an incentive to respect the statutory limits of copyright, lest they risk losing the ability to enforce certain legal claims until the behaviour constituting misuse has been remedied. Although Canada is vulnerable to many of the same forces of overreach and abuse as the United States, no doctrine comparable to copyright misuse currently exists in Canadian law. This may simply be due to the relatively short history of copyright misuse in American jurisprudence, but is likely also attributable to a previous lack of a clearly articulated justification for the doctrine’s existence in Canada. However, the Supreme Court of Canada in a “trilogy” of copyright cases has recently filled that purposive vacuum. The notion of balance between dual objectives, the concept of users\u27 rights and an increasingly economic and instrumentalist understanding of copyright law—all principles to emerge from the trilogy—provide strong support for a “made-in-Canada” approach to copyright misuse. Although unlikely to stem the tide of overreach and abuse completely, the doctrine would serve to uphold the statutory limits of copyright, helping to ensure the Copyright Act’s continuing role as the dominant means of regulating expressive works in Canada. This paper is divided into four parts. Part I canvasses the growing phenomenon of overreach and abuse by content holders. Two broad categories of behaviour are explored, revealing the need for a judicial doctrine capable of responding to the threats posed to copyright law as a result. Part II examines the American doctrine of copyright misuse as a tool to address instances of overreach and abuse. Its recent emergence from the related doctrine of patent misuse is discussed, along with its various doctrinal approaches and potential for future growth and expansion. Part III justifies the importation of the copyright misuse doctrine into Canadian law. The recent articulation of copyright\u27s purpose by the Supreme Court of Canada is proposed as a justificatory basis for the doctrine\u27s recognition, and concerns relating to the viability of copyright misuse in Canada are also addressed. Part IV contains a brief conclusion

Copyright Misuse: Protecting Copyright in Canada from Overreach and Abuse

Faced with a rapidly evolving technological landscape—one in which near-perfect copies of digital content can be created and disseminated with minimal cost and unprecedented ease—copyright owners have sought to exercise greater control over expressive works. In many cases, they have undertaken this task by harnessing the very same technological forces that threaten to disrupt their traditional business models: monitoring online activity and responding to potentially infringing uses with thousands of cease- and-desist letters; licensing rather than selling digital works; or locking down content with technological access and control measures. These attempts at enhanced protection merit concern because their effectiveness is, for the most part, not limited by the scope of rights granted to copyright owners under the Copyright Act. Unrestrained by copyright\u27s statutory limits (including the restriction against copyrighting works in the public domain) and internal safety- valves (such as fair dealing), content holders are now able to routinely overreach the boundaries of copyright law and abuse their limited statutory grant of rights in copyrighted works. This behaviour, which I refer to generally as “overreach and abuse,” can be classified into two broad categories. The first category includes protective measures that, although procedurally valid, cannot ultimately be substantiated in law. Labelled by commentators as “copyfraud,” these actions involve content holders increasingly laying claim to rights in expressive works that have little or no basis in copyright law. Backed by threats of litigation, these spurious claims often go uncontested due to the power imbalance existing between owner and user groups. The second category includes protective measures that are substantively legal, but entirely divorced from the statutory domain of copyright law. Contractual agreements—many of which are subject to considerable inequality of bargaining power—and an array of technological protection measures or “digital locks”—which can be further supported by anti-circumvention laws—are being employed with increasing frequency by content owners. The result is a comprehensive system of legally enforceable barriers to expressive works that often trump copyright law, the terms of which are set almost entirely by private entities. Taken together, these two categories of behaviour not only tip the balance in favour of content holders, rendering users\u27 rights such as fair dealing largely ineffectual, but also threaten to marginalize the application and therefore relevancy of copyright law as a whole. Increasingly, copyright is being displaced by a comprehensive “privately defined rights regime.” In response to this trend, courts, copyright users and legal scholars have begun to look outside the statutory confines of copyright law in the hope of identifying legal tools capable of restoring a degree of balance to the regulation and control of expressive works. One avenue currently being pursued in the United States is the doctrine of copyright misuse, an equitable defence to copyright infringement that arises when a copyright owner has “misused” his or her copyright. Where the Copyright Act is silent or unable to prevent content holders from overstepping the bounds of copyright law, the doctrine of copyright misuse provides owners with an incentive to respect the statutory limits of copyright, lest they risk losing the ability to enforce certain legal claims until the behaviour constituting misuse has been remedied. Although Canada is vulnerable to many of the same forces of overreach and abuse as the United States, no doctrine comparable to copyright misuse currently exists in Canadian law. This may simply be due to the relatively short history of copyright misuse in American jurisprudence, but is likely also attributable to a previous lack of a clearly articulated justification for the doctrine’s existence in Canada. However, the Supreme Court of Canada in a “trilogy” of copyright cases has recently filled that purposive vacuum. The notion of balance between dual objectives, the concept of users\u27 rights and an increasingly economic and instrumentalist understanding of copyright law—all principles to emerge from the trilogy—provide strong support for a “made-in-Canada” approach to copyright misuse. Although unlikely to stem the tide of overreach and abuse completely, the doctrine would serve to uphold the statutory limits of copyright, helping to ensure the Copyright Act’s continuing role as the dominant means of regulating expressive works in Canada. This paper is divided into four parts. Part I canvasses the growing phenomenon of overreach and abuse by content holders. Two broad categories of behaviour are explored, revealing the need for a judicial doctrine capable of responding to the threats posed to copyright law as a result. Part II examines the American doctrine of copyright misuse as a tool to address instances of overreach and abuse. Its recent emergence from the related doctrine of patent misuse is discussed, along with its various doctrinal approaches and potential for future growth and expansion. Part III justifies the importation of the copyright misuse doctrine into Canadian law. The recent articulation of copyright\u27s purpose by the Supreme Court of Canada is proposed as a justificatory basis for the doctrine\u27s recognition, and concerns relating to the viability of copyright misuse in Canada are also addressed. Part IV contains a brief conclusion

Material Vision : A Portrait of Change from Victorianism to Modernism in America

This study is a portrait of Victorian culture in America as it is represented in the photographic album and an examination of the album as an artifact of material culture. The album is viewed as a material and visual reference and the photograph as an historical document. Parallels are drawn between the album\u27s structure, pictorial content and presentation, and compare similarly to the infra-structure of the society. A series of four photographic collections establish a chronology from the 1860s to the early twentieth century, while each documents the changes in the process and presentation of the photographic medium respectively, the four collections provide evidence that signify changes in social attitudes and behaviors that were occurring from 1860s to early 1900s

A conceptual system design and managerial complexity competency model

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel University.Complex adaptive systems are usually difficult to design and control. There are several particular methods for coping with complexity, but there is no general approach to build complex adaptive systems. The challenges of designing complex adaptive systems in a highly dynamic world drive the need for anticipatory capacity within engineering organizations, with a goal of enabling the design of systems that can cope with an unpredictable environment. This thesis explores this question of enhancing anticipatory capacity through the study of a complex adaptive system design methodology and complexity management competencies. A general introduction to challenges and issues in complex adaptive systems design is given, since a good understanding of the industrial context is considered necessary in order to avoid oversimplification of the problem, neglecting certain important factors and being unaware of important influences and relationships. In addition, a general introduction to complex thinking is given, since designing complex adaptive systems requires a non-classical thought, while practical notions of complexity theory and design are put forward. Building on these, the research proposes a Complex Systems Life-Cycle Understanding and Design (CXLUD) methodology to aid system architects and engineers in the design and control of complex adaptive systems. Starting from a creative anticipation construct - a loosening mechanism to allow for more options to be considered, the methodology proposes a conceptual framework and a series of stages to follow to find proper mechanisms that will promote elements to desired solutions by actively interacting among themselves. To illustrate the methodology, a financial systemic risks infrastructure systems architecture development case study is presented. The final part of this thesis develops a conceptual model to analyse managerial complexity competency model from a qualitative phenomenological study perspective. The model developed in this research is called Understanding-Perception-Action (UPA) managerial complexity competency model. The results of this competency model can be used to help ease project manager’s transition into complex adaptive projects, as well as serve as a foundation to launch qualitative and quantitative research into this area of project complexity management

Top Drawer : 150 years of Bittners in theory and practice.

This thesis is a practical summary and theoretical analysis of the development and execution of the exhibition Top Drawer: 150 Years of Bittners, held for public view at the Frazier History Museum in Louisville, Kentucky in November 2012. The thesis further discusses Top Drawer in the broader context of the regional, national and global contemporary museum environment, as well as its impact on the development of the Frazier History Museum\u27s new institutional plan. These examinations are followed by a detailed practicum of the exhibition. This thesis is divided into four chapters covering the areas of museum history, theory and practice, and concludes with a consideration of the institutional future of the Frazier History Museum

Application of the fast model from value engineering to capture and communicate project lessons learnt

Purpose - This research investigated the advantages of using a diagramming tool such as the Functional Analysis System Technique (FAST) model to enhance the effectiveness of capturing and communicating lessons learnt onto future projects. The research looked at current ways of capturing tacit knowledge within a projectized organisation to get a clearer picture and propose alternatives on how the knowledge can be communicated and transferred to novice team members in future. The idea is to capitalise on the graphical nature of the FAST model, presupposing the human mind can comprehend graphical tools better than going through long tedious reports. Design - Focus Group Sessions were conducted using two groups from different business units within a project management and consultancy firm in South Africa. The participants represented the various project stakeholders that comprise a project team. The focus group session consists of a presentation on the background of the study and the FAST process. This served as a brainstorming session and a typical project scenario in capturing and communicating lessons learned was presented to the participants. The first diagram showed the activity log list as found on a project site for a particular lesson learnt process. The second diagram showed the same lesson learnt process presented in a FAST diagram. Afterwards, the participants evaluated the effectiveness of the FAST model to capture and communicate lessons learnt in a project environment. The responses were compiled and findings presented in table format. Findings - The analysis of the data and the responses of the participants proved that the FAST diagram can enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of capturing and communicating lessons learnt. This knowledge transfer initiative provides cost benefits as it improves the project execution and competitive advantage of the organisation. Project execution efficiency is improved by codifying tacit knowledge and avoiding repeating the same mistakes on projects. Practical Implications - Developing a culture of capturing lessons learnt on a project as the execution phase unfolds can be a challenging exercise. Most companies pay less or no attention at all to capturing lessons learnt. However lessons learnt documentation must be supported by a quality control system that is robust and allows easy navigation within a repository. The FAST model empowers project custodians through its dynamic structure to document activities on the project. This ensures the FAST diagram is continuously updated to tie in with the changes on the ground as the project unfolds. Limitations: The results were generated in a controlled environment and require confirmation through longitudinal research of the use of FAST for this purpose in practise on live projects. Keywords: lesson learnt, knowledge transfer, data repository, Function Analysis Systems Technique, tacit knowledge, Value Engineering, knowledge management, activity log-lis

Application of the fast model from value engineering to capture and communicate project lessons learnt

Purpose - This research investigated the advantages of using a diagramming tool such as the Functional Analysis System Technique (FAST) model to enhance the effectiveness of capturing and communicating lessons learnt onto future projects. The research looked at current ways of capturing tacit knowledge within a projectized organisation to get a clearer picture and propose alternatives on how the knowledge can be communicated and transferred to novice team members in future. The idea is to capitalise on the graphical nature of the FAST model, presupposing the human mind can comprehend graphical tools better than going through long tedious reports. Design - Focus Group Sessions were conducted using two groups from different business units within a project management and consultancy firm in South Africa. The participants represented the various project stakeholders that comprise a project team. The focus group session consists of a presentation on the background of the study and the FAST process. This served as a brainstorming session and a typical project scenario in capturing and communicating lessons learned was presented to the participants. The first diagram showed the activity log list as found on a project site for a particular lesson learnt process. The second diagram showed the same lesson learnt process presented in a FAST diagram. Afterwards, the participants evaluated the effectiveness of the FAST model to capture and communicate lessons learnt in a project environment. The responses were compiled and findings presented in table format. Findings - The analysis of the data and the responses of the participants proved that the FAST diagram can enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of capturing and communicating lessons learnt. This knowledge transfer initiative provides cost benefits as it improves the project execution and competitive advantage of the organisation. Project execution efficiency is improved by codifying tacit knowledge and avoiding repeating the same mistakes on projects. Practical Implications - Developing a culture of capturing lessons learnt on a project as the execution phase unfolds can be a challenging exercise. Most companies pay less or no attention at all to capturing lessons learnt. However lessons learnt documentation must be supported by a quality control system that is robust and allows easy navigation within a repository. The FAST model empowers project custodians through its dynamic structure to document activities on the project. This ensures the FAST diagram is continuously updated to tie in with the changes on the ground as the project unfolds. Limitations: The results were generated in a controlled environment and require confirmation through longitudinal research of the use of FAST for this purpose in practise on live projects. Keywords: lesson learnt, knowledge transfer, data repository, Function Analysis Systems Technique, tacit knowledge, Value Engineering, knowledge management, activity log-lis