877 research outputs found
The consideration of organizational issues during the systems development process: an empirical analysis
The lack of consideration of organizational issues in systems development can lead to project failure. A review of the literature and a pre-test survey suggested classifying organizational issues into five categories and examining how these are considered by IT managers. A postal survey with responses
from 64 senior IT specialists over a cross section of industry and commerce showed that there is a general awareness of the
importance of organizational issues but there was little consensus on how they should be addressed in the development
process. These IT managers were consistent in spending most effort on the issues perceived as most important from the list of
14 issue provided, but there was considerable variation in which
specific issues they rated most important. In general those
organizational issues with a `technical’ aspect were given more
prominence than those which are less tangible, but which may
be more critical to a system’s success
The importance of organisational issues in systems development
Abstract: A survey of senior and influential IT managers explored the related
questions of why some senior IT professionals perceive organisational issues to be
more important than technical issues, and whether this has a concomitant impact on
the treatment of organisational issues. An overall response rate of 63% was achieved
from a combined survey of two distinct groups. The results show that there are
significant differences in managers’ perceptions about the importance of organisational
issues which can, to some extent, be explained in terms of organisational size, and to a
lesser extent by the favoured development approach. However, these differences in
perception appear to have no identifiable relation to the significant differences in the
approaches adopted for treating organisational issues. It is suggested that this is due
to the difficulties in treating such issues and further research to resolve these
difficulties is proposed
Creases and boundary conditions for subdivision curves
AbstractOur goal is to find subdivision rules at creases in arbitrary degree subdivision for piece-wise polynomial curves, but without introducing new control points e.g. by knot insertion. Crease rules are well understood for low degree (cubic and lower) curves. We compare three main approaches: knot insertion, ghost points, and modifying subdivision rules. While knot insertion and ghost points work for arbitrary degrees for B-splines, these methods introduce unnecessary (ghost) control points.The situation is not so simple in modifying subdivision rules. Based on subdivision and subspace selection matrices, a novel approach to finding boundary and sharp subdivision rules that generalises to any degree is presented. Our approach leads to new higher-degree polynomial subdivision schemes with crease control without introducing new control points
Individualised learning approach (the three ‘p’s) for a small to medium enterprise through work based learning
An ongoing challenge for education and training providers is to ensure learners can achieve maximum learning and recognition for their vocational education pathways. The strategy and case to be presented could best be described as the 3 ‘p’s approach to the provision of vocational education and training, that is:
I. How we support people in their education and training
II. What processes we use to provide education and training?
III. The place where the learning opportunities are provided.
The aim of this paper is to share an educational and training strategy that has been successfully implemented in an Australian enterprise. The strategy provided education and training for the members of the enterprise in a multidisciplinary manner from a certificate through to a degree outcome, entirely through work-based learning (WBL) pedagogy.
The research was conducted with six candidates (employees of the enterprise) through their educational journey applying a range of WBL activities including projects and initiatives to improve processes and performances in the workplace. Each candidate's program involved designing the learning component following an initial phase of review of their previous learning’s and qualifications with a learning advisor. This process was deemed as 'the learning review'. The other component of this phase was to develop a learning plan to encapsulate an area of study or disciplinary process that would be relevant to the individual candidate. This process was deemed as 'the learning journey plan'.
The second phase was for each candidate to prepare and undertake a problem based/research led learning activity through one or more workplace project/s with the support of the employer.
The final phase involved a structured review and development of a final project report to outline the outcomes and learning’s achieved through the work based projects.
The research undertaken included post-program interviews with the six candidates and the General Manager and provided an example of a relatable model for all workplaces as well as education and training provider
An investigation of the factors affecting the successful treatment of organisational issues in systems development projects
A review of the relevant literature confirms the importance of treating organisational issues in order to
avoid information systems development failures. To investigate how such issues are treated in practice and
the factors associated with their successful treatment, a large-scale survey was conducted. A questionnaire
was mailed to senior IS executives and over 600 responses were received. A majority of the respondents
(60%) perceived that organisational issues were more important than technical issues and a similar proportion
reported treating these issues explicitly, although there was noticeable variation in the frequency
with which specific types of issues were treated. However, only 50% felt that organisational issues were
successfully dealt with in more than 30% of the projects for which they were responsible. This proportion
seems to be independent of the type of organisation or the general development approach adopted, but the
results also indicate that using an approach to treating organisational issues which is explicit, frequent and
covers a wide range of specific issues is associated with higher levels of success. These results suggest
that senior IT executives need to go further in ensuring that the treatment of organisational issues is given
greater time, resource and level of priority
The Integration of Remote Sensing and GIS to Facilitate Sustainable Urban Environmental Management: The Case of Bangkok, Thailand
Cities in developing countries are facing serious problems as a result of rapid urban population growth. Not the least of these problems is the creation of environmental stresses at the rural-urban fringe of these cities as they increase in area and envelop fertile surrounding agricultural lands. Because of this rapid rate of growth, sustainable urban environmental management (SUEM) policies and practices are often difficult to develop and implement proactively. This thesis argues that rapid population growth and subsequent urban expansion occurs such that urban form and function are built around the transportation network. In this context, a basic requirement for the facilitation of SUEM is the ability to be able to detect and extract indicators of urban expansion, in particular the road network, from available satellite remote sensing (RS) data. Subsequently, the indictors of growth derived from RS imagery can be integrated into a multi-source GIS database with ground-based census data to facilitate potential environmental stress analysis. The extraction of useful data from RS imagery for GIS-based analysis of urban growth is achieved through an integrated conceptual and operational framework presented in the thesis. This framework allows for environmental stress analysis at the urban periphery that can assist with the design of policies to contain urban growth
Simplifying the Development, Use and Sustainability of HPC Software
Developing software to undertake complex, compute-intensive scientific
processes requires a challenging combination of both specialist domain
knowledge and software development skills to convert this knowledge into
efficient code. As computational platforms become increasingly heterogeneous
and newer types of platform such as Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) cloud
computing become more widely accepted for HPC computations, scientists require
more support from computer scientists and resource providers to develop
efficient code and make optimal use of the resources available to them. As part
of the libhpc stage 1 and 2 projects we are developing a framework to provide a
richer means of job specification and efficient execution of complex scientific
software on heterogeneous infrastructure. The use of such frameworks has
implications for the sustainability of scientific software. In this paper we
set out our developing understanding of these challenges based on work carried
out in the libhpc project.Comment: 4 page position paper, submission to WSSSPE13 worksho
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