Graph-based collaboration analysis of an agile medical engineering project with structural metrics

Agile development approaches are gaining popularity in hardware product development and medical engineering. Consequently, techniques of structural complexity management can be applied on agile projects. This paper analyses the collaboration data of a twelve-month project to design a 3D-printed microtiter plate. Exchanged e-mails, created artifacts, and conducted tasks were analyzed to identify typical barriers of inter-disciplinary collaboration. Appropriate improvement measures to overcome these barriers were suggested and evaluated in a four-hour workshop with members of the core team of the project. As a result, out of the collaboration network with 851 nodes and 9001 edges, six main barriers were identified. The most hindering barriers according to the experts' opinion were matched with appropriate improvement measures. After an assessment of the cost/benefit ratio, two measures were chosen for implementation

Distribution and abundance of juvenile Loligo gahi in Falkland Island waters

Four research surveys of Falkland Island waters were carried out to determine the distribution and abundance of the early life-history stages of Loligo gahi (d'Orbigny, 1835) in the austral winter of 1988 and the austral springs of 1990, 1991 and 1992. Juveniles were caught during three of the four surveys in both Bongo nets and an RMT8 net. In each case, greatest numbers were consistently caught in waters of ≤100 m to the south and east of East Falkland. The use of an opening/closing net in 1992 showed that most L. gahi juveniles aggregate close to the sea floor and are more available to the sampling gear by night than by day. Limited temperature data for the 1991 and 1992 surveys suggest that distribution on the coastal shelf may be associated with water-column structure. In 1992 when temperature data implied a mixed water column, juveniles were caught in deeper water than in 1991 when the water column was stratified. The results suggest that the spawning grounds of L. gahi are probably situated to the south and east of the Falkland Islands, at least for squid hatched in the austral winter/spring