Distributed Mobile Robotics (DMR) is a multidisciplinary research area with many open research questions. This is a survey of the state of the art in Distributed Mobile Robotics research. DMR is sometimes referred to as cooperative robotics or multi-robotic systems. DMR is about how multiple robots can cooperate to achieve goals and complete tasks better than single robot systems. It covers architectures, communication, learning, exploration and many other areas presented in this master thesis.

Detta kandidatarbete utreder hur väl två operativsystems inbyggda brandväggar fungerar i symbios med en användares vanligaste tjänsteutnyttjande på Internet, samt att se hur likartade de är i sitt skydd från hot. De två operativsystemen som vi utgick ifrån var Microsoft Windows XP samt Red Hat Linux 8.0. Den hypotes vi arbetat kring lyder enligt följande: De två inbyggda brandväggarna är i stort likartade rörande skydd från hot på Internet och uppfyller användarnas tjänsteutnyttjande. De metoder vi använt, för att svara på vår frågeställning, har delats upp i ett funktionalitetstest och ett säkerhetstest. I funktionalitetstestet provades de vanligaste Internettjänsterna med den inbyggda brandväggen och ifall det uppstod några komplikationer eller ej. De två inbyggda brandväggarna genom gick i säkerhetstestet skannings- och svaghetskontroll via ett flertal verktyg. Genom resultatet kan vi konstatera att de inbyggda brandväggarna klarar av de vanligaste tjänsterna på Internet, men att en skillnad föreligger hos dem vad gäller exponeringen ut mot Internet. Windows XP ligger helt osynligt utåt, medan Red Hats inbyggda brandvägg avslöjar en mängd information om värddatorn, som kan komma att användas i illvilliga syften. Slutsatsen blev att vi avslutningsvis falsifierade vår hypotes då de två inbyggda brandväggarna ej var jämlika i sitt skydd mot yttre hot på Internet.

Paralleling the rapid advancement in the network evolution is the need for advanced network traffic management surveillance. The increasing number and variety of services being offered by communication networks has fuelled the demand for optimized load management strategies. The problem of Load Control Management in Intelligent Networks has been studied previously and four Multi-Agent architectures have been proposed. The objective of this thesis is to investigate one of the quality attributes namely, scalability of the four Multi-Agent architectures. The focus of this research would be to resize the network and study the performance of the different architectures in terms of Load Control Management through different scalability attributes. The analysis has been based on experimentation through simulations. It has been revealed through the results that different architectures exhibit different performance behaviors for various scalability attributes at different network sizes. It has been observed that there exists a trade-off in different scalability attributes as the network grows. The factors affecting the network performance at different network settings have been observed. Based on the results from this study it would be easier to design similar networks for optimal performance by controlling the influencing factors and considering the trade-offs involved.

More and more companies experience problems with maintainability and time-consuming development of automated testing tools. The MPC department at Ericsson Software Technology AB use methods and tools often developed during time pressure that results in time-consuming testing and requires more effort and resources than planned. The tools are also such nature that they are hard to expand, maintain and in some cases they have been thrown out between releases. For this reason, we could identify two major objectives that MPC want to achieve; efficient and maintainable test automation. Efficient test automation is related to mainly how to perform tests with less effort, or in a shorter time. Maintainable test automation aims to keep tests up to date with the software. In order to decide how to achieve these objectives, we decided to investigate which test to automate, what should be improved in the testing process, what techniques to use, and finally whether or not the use of automated testing can reduce the cost of testing. These issues will be discussed in this paper.

Dagens mobiltelefoner får fler och fler funktioner, det är inte längre ovanligt om det går att koppla upp sig mot Internet eller ta kort med mobiltelefonen. Men frågan som ställs i detta arbete är om mobiltelefonanvändarna är intresserade av dessa nya funktioner. Finns det de som är intresserade av vad som i detta arbete kallas basmobilen, vars funktioner är följande: telefonsamtal, SMS, telefonbok, samtalslista, alarm och möjligheten att kunna byta ringsignal. Efter en historisk inblick i mobiltelefonens utveckling ges en beskrivning av vad basmobilen motsvarar. Med hjälp av en enkätundersökning, intervjuer och insamlade dagböcker besvaras frågan vad mobiltelefonanvändarna är intresserade av. Resultatet visar att basmobilen inte är ointressant för enkätbesvararna, men det finns även en del som saknar funktioner. Detta tas sedan upp i diskussionsavsnittet, där det även finns ett förslag på hur mobiltelefoner ska byggas upp för att passa en så bred användargrupp som möjligt.

In this master thesis problems in a small market-driven software development company are discussed. Problems such as fast changes in the company are a result of the constantly changing market. The fast changes must be managed within the company with tailored process covering the needs like short time-to-market. Misunderstandings when managing ideas from marketing and challenging issues such as communication gaps between marketing staff and developers are discussed. These problem areas are identified by the case study through interviews of selected staff. The problems adhere from fast changes and lack of processes and structures. This paper has recommended several points influenced by agile software development with Scrum and XP. The recommendations are chosen to fit the problem areas identified by the interviews. They will work as a starting point for the company to improve the situation and to use XP and Scrum for further improvements.

Abstract The purpose of writing this thesis was to improve methods during requirements engineering phase. Usercentred system engineering has some problem areas, which are examined and verified to create a new guideline for developers. This guideline tends to make requirements engineering more effective and help developers create more concrete requirements. It is not uncommon that system development projects ends up with unsatisfied users or delay in deliveries. The reasons are different kinds of communication problems between users and developers during verification of requirements. There is a therapy model, called solution-focused therapy, used in family and individual therapy. The model focuses on solutions for the future instead of problems in the past. This method has never been used in system developing until today. Based on literature studies and scenarios we have shown that it is possible to transfer this pedagogy into the system developing branch especially in requirements engineering. During our investigation we have shown that the pedagogy refute the difficulties within usercentred design. The pedagogy model can be used in four kinds of methods for capturing requirements; questionnaires, interviews, workshops and observations. The model activates and makes the user more implicated. To show this, we have applied the pedagogy model on scenarios taken from earlier experiences of requirements engineering. The outcome of this investigation is that developers can create a more pleasant communication atmosphere with this pedagogy. A result of this is that users becomes more willing and helpful to create a new system and therefore makes it easier for developers and users to cooperate. You can avoid many communication problems if you know how to go around them.

During 2001-2002 a prototype, IMIS (Integrated Mobile Information System) was developed at BTH (Blekinge University of Technology) to demonstrate how mobile IT-systems can be used in healthcare. The prototype was based on the activity theory of Engeström. An ongoing project started in spring 2003. The purpose of the project is further development of IMIS with special focus in the diabetes healthcare. Participants in the project are scientists and students at BTH, ALMI Företagspartner, Blekinge FoU-enhet, Barndiabetesförbundet Blekinge, Blekinge Diabetesförening, Vårdcentralen Ronneby and Vårdcentralen Sölvesborg. The goal of IMIS is to develop a secure communication platform, which follows requirements from caretaker and caregiver as well as the Swedish laws regulating digital information and healthcare. The output of this master thesis is a requirement specification of information security for healthcare where IMIS has been used as a case study. The requirements specification follows the international standard SS-ISO/IEC 17799.

Vi har utvärderat IMIS med hjälp av användbarhetstester tillsammans med hemtjänstpersonal verksamma på fältet. Målet med utvärderingen har varit att redovisa eventuella problem av användbarhetskaraktär och utifrån dessa ge förslag på förbättringar inför en vidareutveckling av systemet. Syftet med vårt arbete har varit att bidra med ökad kunskap när det gäller användbarheten för IT-verktyg inom hemtjänsten. IMIS (Integrated Mobile Information System) är ett interaktivt informationssystem, som studenter från IT-programmet vid Blekinge Tekniska högskola har utvecklat. Systemet är en prototyp ämnad att utvecklas vidare för bruk inom hemtjänsten. Det är tänkt att fungera som ett hjälpmedel för att underlätta samordning och kommunikation mellan vårdpersonal, göra information om vårdtagarna lättillgänglig för vårdgivarna, samt kunna ge en helhetsbild av vårdtagarna och deras personliga nätverk. Hemtjänst innebär att den som inte kan klara sig på egen hand på grund av sjukdom, handikapp eller åldersförändringar kan få hjälp i det egna hemmet med bl.a. städning och personlig omvårdnad av kommunalt anställda vårdbiträden. De senaste 20 åren har datoriseringen ökat markant och persondatorer har numera blivit en förbrukningsvara för en stor del av befolkningen. Nya produkter och system ställer dock ofta till med problem för användarna eftersom de inte alltid är anpassade till de tilltänkta användarnas färdigheter och behov. Mobila kommunikationslösningar inom hemtjänsten är ett relativt nytt koncept. Det unika med dessa lösningar är att de i första hand riktar sig till de som arbetar ute hos vårdtagarna. Från en communicator, som är en kombinerad trådlös telefon och handdator, kopplar personalen upp sig mot Internet där alla med behörighet kan ta del av informationen i samma stund som den skrivs, var de än befinner sig. Användbarhet kan definieras och göras mätbart på många olika sätt. Vi har valt att utgå från den internationella standarden för användbarhet ISO 9241-11, där vi fokuserar på ändamålsenlighet och tillfredsställelse. För att genomföra våra tester har vi använt metoden kooperativ utvärdering som är en vidareutveckling av metoden thinking-aloud. Metoden går i korta drag ut på att användare kommenterar högt under tiden de arbetar med uppgifter. Det är en empirisk och formativ utvärderingsmetod av mindre formell karaktär där observatören deltar i utvärderingen. Vi har även använt frågeformulär både före, under och efter de praktiska testerna. Testerna genomfördes tillsammans med sju fast anställda vårdbiträden inom hemtjänsten i Karlshamns kommun. De flesta av deltagarna hade ingen eller mycket liten datorvana. Alla testpersoner var dock positiva till systemet och ingen tyckte att systemet verkade speciellt svårt att använda. Efter att ha provat verktyget, tyckte de flesta att det var lättare än de hade fått intryck av från början. Sex av deltagarna trodde att de kunde ha nytta av de funktioner de hade fått prova på i arbetet, och de skulle även rekommendera att kommunen köpte in systemet till hemtjänsten. Alla tyckte att systemet var tilltalande och effektivt. Endast tre av deltagarna klarade av alla uppgifterna inom utsatt tid. Dessa tre hade alla lite eller medel datorvana. Det största problemet relaterat till systemet var deltagarnas förvirring i samband med att huvudfönstret inte laddades om när de klickade på en länk i menyn, vilket innebar att innehåll i huvudfönster och meny inte alltid stämde överens. Tillsammans med de teoretiska studierna har användbarhetstesterna gett oss ökad insikt om användbarheten för IT-verktyg inom hemtjänsten.

Att lära sig programmera på nybörjarnivå inom ramen för en högskoleutbildning är en process som för vissa studenter tycks helt oproblematisk medan den för andra ter sig smärtsam eller rent av oöverstiglig. Varför är det så och hur kan man hitta ingångar i formandet av programmeringskunskap som öppnar möjligheter för alla som vill lära sig? Med dessa frågeställningar som utgångspunkt har jag tittat på två olika utbildningsprogram vid Blekinge Tekniska Högskola (BTH) - Informationsteknologiprogrammet respektive Medieteknik-programmet. Jag har intervjuat ett urval studenter och lärare från de båda programmen och ställt frågor bl a kring tidigare erfarenheter av datorer och programmering, synen på programmering, upplevda svårigheter med att lära sig programmera och tänkbara orsaker till dessa svårigheter. Resultaten från intervjuerna har reflekterats genom ett antal texter som behandlar föreställningar och förhållningssätt i formandet av programmeringskunskap såväl som mer övergripande frågor kring epistemologiska utgångspunkter i formandet av all slags kunskap, men med fokus på programmeringskunskap. Min metodologi är förankrad i genus-forskningsteorier kring de vetenskapliga kunskapsprocesserna, inom vilka frågor rörande bl a metod- och teoriinnehåll problematiseras. Denna förankring har möjliggjort den kontextuella analys i vilken jag försökt lyfta fram allmängiltiga såväl som specifika tendenser, d v s både faktorer som kan härröras till respektive program jag studerat och faktorer som berör programmeringsundervisning i högskolemiljö generellt. I den avslutande diskussionen har jag lagt särskild vikt vid de frågeställningar som jag uppfattar har den mest signifikanta betydelsen för hur möjligheter kan skapas för att programmeringskunskap ska uppfattas som "tillgänglig" av alla som har intresse av att lära sig programmera. Dessa frågeställningar berör just den övergripande kunskapssyn inom vilken programmeringsundervisning alltför ofta formas; en kunskapssyn som ger uttryck för ett mer eller mindre utpräglat prestationstänkande. Frågeställningar kring vilka konsekvenser en "likriktad" undervisning kan få för olika individer tas också upp och möjligheter till skapandet av mångfald i undervisningen diskuteras liksom lärarnas roll i detta sammanhang. Med detta arbete vill jag bidra till kunskapsunderlag för ett pedagogiskt utvecklingsarbete - till gagn för studenter och lärare såväl som programmeringsämnet i sig.

In several cases, systems that have been developed have been very time consuming and cost a lot of money, but they still do not fulfil the users requirements and requests. To make new systems better, you have to find a way to communicate that allows the developers to understand the needs of the user. The aim for our thesis is to highlight the importance of communication in system development. To investigate this we have choosen to do a study of the real-estate system. The work methods that have been used include mock-ups and informal conversations with the user, who is employed by the Church of Sweden in Ronneby. The purpose of this thesis is, among other things, to provide the Church of Sweden in Ronneby with a report, which can be of help for further development of the system. The system was developed by a work group at Blekinge Institute of Technology. Our question of issue is: Would the Church of Sweden in Ronneby obtain a more useful system if the developers applied the guidelines and experience that exists within the area of HCI? Further more we have looked in to if the communication has improved with the use of mock-ups to increase the interaction? Human-computer interaction as a term was adopted in the mid-1980s as a means of describing this new field of study. The focus of interest described the new way of looking at the interaction between computers and people. In this field it is important to involve the user in the developing process from the beginning to the end. Together with the user, we have made some propositions based on previous documentation from the project. Mock-ups are a prototype of paper that shows the user what the system will look like. This method was applied together with the user, to find a more logical structure for the system. After gathering the result of the case study, we can honestly say that communication do increase because of mock-ups. Good communication is not something that you can learn from books; you have to adjust to the situation. It is important when you develop a system to work with a model that allows you to go back and change things in previous phases that are incorrect, and also to include the user in the whole process.

Abstract In the contemporary world of information technology you find a multitude of applications and systems covering a broad spectrum of areas of need in different companies. One effect of this multitude of programs is the difficulty to make them exchange information with each other or to collaborate, since they are developed by different programming languages for different platforms, with different standards and different data formats. Our aim with this work is to describe how it is possible to tie these programs together to make them actually communicate with each other in order to exchange information, share their native methods and also to become a part of the overall business processes. In this integration task you will, among other things, find different levels of application integration such as data level, method level, application interface level and user interface level integration. Application integration also involves hardware components, called middleware, that facilitate the physical connection between applications. There is a range of different middleware products offered today on the market. The functionalities of those products varies greatly depending on which technology or technologies they are built around and which vendor they come from. In order to make a connection to a real life situation we have made up a company with a need of integration. By trying to choose a solution for this company we discuss what to integrate, data, methods etc, and the technical solution, middleware product, which might be useful to integrate the different kind of applications in our imaginary company. Finally we have come up with some conclusions in our work. These are both of a more general art and also a conclusion specific to our case study.

Introduction Web Services is a relatively new concept to distributed data systems. It provides a new way for companies to easily integrate with other companies. With UDDI, companies are able to host their services in a wider market and also connect to other companies. However, with business expansion also follows trust issues. In order to share Web Services in a business partner relationship it is necessary to have a relation of trust. Purpose The purpose of this thesis is to investigate about this issue, i.e. how Web Services with the use of UDDI can be made as a “network of trust” and additionally obtain an idea about how the use of these two will look like in the future. The question of trust between partners sharing Web Services is still open. There has therefore been an interest to look at this problem. The aim for this thesis is to find possible solutions that can be used to address the problem. Method To investigate this we chose to do a literature study and continue with a survey consisted by interviews and questionnaires. Interviews were used to find which solutions that are available in reality and the questionnaires provide information about to what extent Web services and the found solutions are used. The questionnaire was done on random Swedish companies and was sent by e-mails. The interviews were done on two global Swedish companies, Volvo and Ericsson. This way information was found and could be compared in how the issue is dealt with in the literature and what is actually done in reality. Conclusion The outcome of the entire investigation is that Web Services today, even though it exists in most companies, is still in testing phase. As for this, the use of UDDI has had little attention and so has the issues regarding trust. The solution we found to the most applicable to create a network of trust is the Liberty Alliance Project. Web Services, UDDI, trust

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the way to improve the visibility of a website on thesearch engine result page (SERP). If the website is not on the first three result, then it will bemissing most of the traffic that could be generated. This report will go into detail on how towork with SEO and how to get a website to rank high. Both On-page, how to work with codeand content, and Off-page, how to get more links, methods will be discussed, with a higherfocus on On-page.This paper strives to find what methods and techniques to use with the results gathered fromscientific databases, interviews and three websites with different levels of SEOimplementation. How to structure the code, where and how to use keywords, domain name,links and much more will be discussed in this paper.

We have chosen to look closer at the area of security for electronic invoices. The purpose of this inquest is to provide our case study with a security analysis of three suggestions and a recommendation of the best solution, according to our test. The three solutions are ISDN via a third party, X.25 via Internet bank and Mail server. The company in our case study is in this report referred to as X, has a strong market position and a large clientele and therefore we were interested in analysing and improving X?s electronic invoice system. X was in the position of testing an electronic invoicing system towards a selective group of business customers. The major problem with the system was the security issue regarding transferring the file.

Each day new computers around the world connects to the Internet or some network. The increasing number of people and computers on the Internet has lead to a demand for more services in different domains that can be accessed from many locations in the network. When the computers communicate they use different kinds of protocols to be able to deliver a service. One of these protocol families are remote procedure calls between computers. Remote procedure calls has been around for quite some time but it is with the Internet that its usage has increased a lot and especially in its object oriented form which comes from the fact that object oriented programming has become a popular choice amongst programmers. When a programmer has to choose a distributed object middleware there is a lot to take into consideration and one of those things is performance. This master thesis aims to give a performance comparison between different distributed object middleware technologies and give an overview of the performance difference between them and make it easier for a programmer to choose one of the technologies when performance is an important factor. In this thesis we have evaluated the performance of CORBA, DCOM, RMI, RMI-IIOP, Remoting-TCP and Remoting-HTTP. The results we have seen from this evaluation is that DCOM and RMI are the distributed object middleware technologies with the best overall performance in terms of throughput and round trip time. Remoting-TCP generally generates the least amount of network traffic, while Remoting-HTTP generates the most amount of network traffic due to it's SOAP-formated protocol.

This work is a study examining the causes of fire fighting in software projects. Fire fighting is the practice of reactive management, i.e. focus being put at solving the problem of the moment. The study in the thesis is performed in two parts, one part is a literature study examining what academia considers as the reasons of fire fighting and how to minimise the problem. The other part of the thesis is an interview series performed in the industry with the purpose of finding what they consider the causes of the fire fighting phenomena. What is indicated by the interview series, as being the main causes of the problems are problems that are related to requirements, and problems caused by persons with key knowledge leaving the project.

The general block distribution of a matrix is a rectilinear partition of the matrix into orthogonal blocks such that the maximum sum of the elements within a single block is minimized. This corresponds to partitioning the matrix onto parallel processors so as to minimize processor load while maintaining regular communication patterns. Applications of the problem include various parallel sparse matrix computations, compilers for high-performance languages, particle in cell computations, video and image compression, and simulations associated with a communication network. We analyze the performance guarantee of a natural and practical heuristic based on iterative refinement, which has previously been shown to give good empirical results. When p2 is the number of blocks, we show that the tight performance ratio is Theta(rootp). When the matrix has rows of large cost, the details of the objective function of the algorithm are shown to be important, since a naive implementation can lead to a Ohm (p) performance ratio. Extensions to more general cost functions, higher-dimensional arrays, and randomized initial configurations are also considered. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

Problemområde: Idag har Internet blivit var mans egendom. Detta innebär tyvärr en hel del problem. Det tydligaste vi står inför idag är att IP-adresserna håller på att ta slut. För att bli av med problemet används olika temporära lösningar ("lappningsteknik") men även en permanent lösning utvecklas, nämligen Ipv6 (Internet Protocol version 6).Det nya protokollet löser adressbristen men har även många andra funktioner så som säkerhet och bättre routinglösningar. Vi ställde oss då frågan varför har ingen övergång skett trots dessa fördelar. Frågeställning: Var i övergången mellan IPv4 och IPv6 står vi idag? Varför har inte övergången mellan IPv4 och IPv6 redan skett? Vilka är de största anledningarna och vilka fler möjliga finns det? Slutsats: Arbetet visar att tiden för en övergång ännu inte är inne. Huvudanledningarna är att det saknas produkter och en allmän anledning för en migration.

Software inspections, which were originally developed by Michael Fagan in 1976, are an important means to verify and achieve sufficient quality in many software projects today. Since Fagan's initial work, the importance of software inspections has been long recognized by software developers and many organizations. Various proposals have been made by researchers in the hope of improving Fagan's inspection method. The proposals include structural changes to the process and several types of support for the inspection process. Most of the proposals have been empirically investigated in different studies. This is a review paper focusing on the software inspection process in the light of Fagan's inspection method and it summarizes and reviews other types of software inspection processes that have emerged in the last 25 years. This paper also addresses important issues related to the inspection process and examines experimental studies and their findings that are of interest with the purpose of identifying future avenues of research in software inspection.

The requirements engineering (RE) process is a decision-rich complex problem solving activity. This paper examines the elements of organization-oriented macro decisions as well as process-oriented micro decisions in the RE process and illustrates how to integrate classical decision-making models with RE process models. This integration helps in formulating a common vocabulary and model to improve the manageability of the RE process, and contributes towards the learning process by validating and verifying the consistency of decision-making in RE activities.

For a long time, information hiding has focused on carriers like images and audio files. A problem with these carriers is that they do not support hiding in new types of network-based services. Nowadays, these services often arise as a consequence of the increasingly demand for higher connection speed to the Internet. By introducing streaming media as a carrier of hidden information, hiding in new network-based services is supported. The main purposes with this thesis are to investigate how information can be hidden in streaming media and how it measures up compared to images and audio files. In order to evaluate the approach, we have developed a prototype and used it as a proof of concept. This prototype hides information in some of the TCP/IP header fields and is used to collect experimental data as well. As reference, measurements have been collected from other available carriers of hidden information. In some cases, the results of these experiments show that the TCP/IP header is a good carrier of information. Its performance is outstanding and well suited for hiding information quickly. The tests showed that the capacity is slightly worse though.

This report discusses the importance of test process evaluation in order to improve a test model and to provide developer- and management feedback. The report results in a test evaluation framework, developed in cooperation with a department at Ericsson Software Technology in Karlsrona. The framework is a result of discussions with the developers regarding performed testing, studying defect types from past projects and by analyzing the result from a small survey answered by some of the developers at Ericsson. The overall project aim was to evaluate performed testing in order to improve the test model. This requires a good insight of the test process, which is provided by the developed test evaluation framework. The test process is visualized by extracting test process data, making it possible to achieve the project aim. The project aim can be divided into the three following areas: Firstly to evaluate if the current test model is followed as expected, for example are all test techniques used according to the test model? Secondly to evaluate how well the test model fulfills predefined expectations, i.e. is a defect detected with the expected test technique and in the expected test phase? Finally to evaluate if there are any problematic defects that should receive extra attention during a project such as if one or several defect types occurs more frequently than others? The framework is based on another framework, Orthogonal Defect Classification [Chillarege92], combined with the research area Test Technique Effectiveness. The aim of this combination was to support the developed framework. Further a specific part of the framework is focusing on developer- and management feedback.

In this master thesis two different worldviews are compared: a mechanistic, and an organic worldview. The way we think the world and the nature work reflects on how we think organizations work, or how they ought to work. The mechanistic worldview has dominated our way of thinking since the seventeenth century, and it compares the world with a machine. The organic worldview could use a number of different metaphors, but the one addressed in this thesis is complexity theory. Complexity theory is related to chaos theory and is concerned with complex adaptive systems (cas). Complex adaptive systems exist everywhere and are systems such as the human immune system, economies, and ecosystems. What complexity theory tries to do is to understand these systems—how they arise, how they function and how order emerge in them. When looking at complex adaptive systems you can’t just look at the different parts. You must take a more holistic view and look at the whole and the interaction of the parts. If you just look at the parts you will miss the emergent properties that have emerged as the system has self-organized. One prominent aspect of these systems is that they don’t have any central authority, but somehow order do arise. In relation to organizations, complexity theory has something to say about almost all aspects of organizations: from what kind of leadership is needed, and how teams should be organized to the physical structure of the organization. To understand what complexity theory is and how to relate that to (software developing) organizations is the main focus of this thesis. Scrum is an agile and lightweight process which can be applied on development projects in general, but have been used in such diverse examples as software development projects, marketing programs, and business process reengineering (BPR) initiatives. In this thesis Scrum is used as an example of how to apply complexity theory to organizations. The result of the thesis showed that Scrum is highly influenced and compatible with complexity theory, which implies that complexity theory is of some use in software development. However, there are more work to be done to determine how effective it is, how to introduce it into organizations, and to explore more specific implementations. This master thesis should give the reader a good understanding of what complexity theory is, some specific issues to consider when applying complexity theory on organizations, and some specific examples of how to apply complexity theory on organizations.

Cost, quality and lead-time are three main concerns in software engineering projects. The quality of developed software has traditionally been evaluated on completed systems. Evaluating the product quality at completion introduces a great risk of wasting effort on software products with inadequate system qualities. It is the objective of this thesis to define and study methods for assessment, evaluation and prediction of software systems’ modifiability characteristics based on their architecture designs. Since software architecture design is made early in the development, architecture evaluation helps detect inadequate designs and thus reduces the risk of implementing systems of insufficient quality. We present a method for architecture-level analysis of modifiability (ALMA) that analyses the modifiability potential of a software system based on its software architecture design. The method is scenario-based and either compares architecture candidates, assesses the risk associated with modifications of the architecture, or predicts the effort needed to implement anticipated modifications. The modification prediction results in three values; a prediction of the modification effort and the predicted best- and worst-case effort for the same system and change scenario profile. In this way the prediction method provides a frame-of-reference that supports the architect in the decision whether the modifiability is acceptable or not. The method is based on the experiences and results from one controlled experiment and seven case-studies, where five case studies are part of this thesis. The experiment investigates different ways to organize the scenario elicitation and finds that a group of individually prepared persons produce better profiles than individuals or unprepared groups.

The challenge in software development is to develop software with the right quality levels. The main problem is not to know if a project is technically feasible concerning functionality, but if a solution exists that meet the software quality requirements. It is therefore desired to get an early indication of the qualities of the resulting software. Software architecture is concerned with what modules are used to compose a system and how these modules are related to each other, i.e. the structure of system. The software architecture of a system sets the boundaries for these qualities. Hence, to design the software architecture to meet the quality requirements is to reduce the risks of not achieving the required quality levels. In this thesis we present the experiences from a software architecture design project with two industry partners. Based on these we propose a method for reengineering architectures and exemplify by an applying the method on a real world example. The method is based on architecture transformations and software quality evaluation of the architecture. Further, we present a method for predicting software maintenance effort from the software architecture, for use in the design and reengineering method. The method uses change scenario profiles to describe future changes to the system and architecture impact analysis provide knowl-edge of the modification volume required for the realization of each sce-nario. The results from a quasi experiment supports that groups consisting of prepared members create better scenario profiles. Also, the results suggest that there is a large room for variation between scenario profiles created by individual persons.

The challenge in software development is to develop software with the right quality levels. The main problem is not to know if a project is technically feasible concerning functionality, but if a solution exists that meet the software quality requirements. It is therefore desired to get an early indication of the qualities of the resulting software. Software architecture is concerned with what modules are used to compose a system and how these modules are related to each other, i.e. the structure of system. The software architecture of a system sets the boundaries for these qualities. Hence, to design the software architec-ture to meet the quality requirements is to reduce the risks of not achieving the required quality levels. In this thesis we present the experiences from a software architecture design project with two industry partners. Based on these we propose a method for reengineering architectures and exemplify by an applying the method on a real world example. The method is based on architec-ture transformations and software quality evaluation of the architecture. Further, we present a method for predicting software maintenance effort from the software architecture, for use in the design and reengineering method. The method uses change scenario profiles to describe future changes to the system and architecture impact analysis provide knowl-edge of the modification volume required for the realization of each sce-nario. The results from a quasi experiment supports that groups consisting of prepared members create better scenario profiles. Also, the results suggest that there is a large room for variation between scenario profiles created by individual persons.

Sweden is considered as a leading nation in modern IT business. The growth of software development business provides an opportunity to strengthen the software engineering research in Sweden even further. This conference is intended as a starting point for a national network on software engineering and provides opportunity to discuss the current situation in software engineering research. Besides that the conference present a forum for Ph. D. students to meet and exchange ideas.

These proceedings comprise of eight peer-reviewed articles ranging from software engineering fields such as process improvement to component based development and software architecture.

Scenario profiles are used increasingly often for the assessment of quality attributes during the architectural design of software systems. However, the definition of scenario profiles is subjective and no data is available on the effects of individuals on scenario profiles. In this paper we present the design, analysis and results of a controlled experiment on the effect of individuals on scenario profiles, so that others can replicate the experiments on other projects and people. Both scenario profiles created by individuals and by groups are studied. The findings from the experiment showed that groups with prepared members proved to be the best method for creating scenario profiles. Unprepared groups did not perform better than individuals when creating scenario profiles.

Scenario profiles are used increasingly often for the assessment of quality attributes during the architectural design of software systems. However, the definition of scenario profiles is subjective and no data is available on the effects of individuals on scenario profiles. In this paper we present the design, analysis and results of a controlled experiment on the effect of individuals on scenario profiles, so that others can replicate the experiments on other projects and people. Both scenario profiles created by individuals and by groups are studied. The findings from the experiment showed that groups with prepared members proved to be the best method for creating scenario profiles. Unprepared groups did not perform better than individuals when creating scenario profiles.

A method for the prediction of software maintainability during software architecture design is presented. The method rakes (1) the requirement specification (2) the design of the architecture (3) expertise from software engineers and, possibly, (4) historical data as input and generates a prediction of the average effort for a maintenance task. Scenarios are used by the method to concretize the maintainability requirements and to analyze the architecture for the prediction of the maintainability. The method is formulated based on extensive experience in software architecture design and detailed design and exemplified using the design of software architecture for a haemo dialysis machine. Experiments for evaluation and validation of the method are ongoing and future work.

This paper presents a method for reengineering software architectures. The method explicitly addresses the quality attributes of the software architecture. Assessment of quality attributes is performed primarily using scenarios. Design transformations are done to improve quality attributes that do not satisfy the requirements. Assessment and design transformation can be performed for several iterations until all requirements are met. To illustrate the method we use the reengineering of a prototypical measurement system into a domain-specific software architecture as an example.

The software architecture plays an important role in achieving a modifiable system, but few methods for modifiability analysis exist. In this paper, we propose an analysis method for software architecture modifiability that has successfully been applied in several cases. The method consists of five main steps, i.e. goal selection, software architecture description, scenario elicitation, scenario evaluation and interpretation.

Software process improvement is often mentioned in today?s software marketplace. To be able to do process improvement, the organisation must have a process to improve from. These processes are commonly deviated from, and the PDU/PAY organisation at Ericsson AB has experienced that this happens too often within their organisation. The aim of this master thesis was to investigate why such deviations occur and how they could be prevented at PDU/PAY. A survey including a qualitative and a quantitative part was conducted at PDU/PAY to investigate this issue. The result was that processes were often deviated from due to lack of: management commitment, user involvement, synchronisation between processes, change management, anchoring of processes, and communication of processes. In addition to the conducted studies, an improvement proposal is given to the PDU/PAY organisation. This includes one organisational part and one part that is directly related to the actual work with processes. The proposal is intended to give PDU/PAY an essence of how to improve their work with their organisational processes.

When conducting process related work within an organization, it is important to be aware of which factors that are most important to consider. This paper presents an empirical study that was performed in order to find the key success factors in process management. One factor, namely synchronization of processes, was considered as much more important within the studied organization than within the studied literature. This shows that more research might be needed in this area. The study further shows that it is important to relate process improvement work to the properties of the affected organization and that the key factors identified are highly interrelated.

HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language) introducerades som ett enkelt och plattformsoberoende språk med syftet att göra information tillgänglig över hela världen och är idag det mest kända och använda språket på webben. När HTML skapades var det huvudsakliga användningsområdet publicering. Efter hand ökade mognaden hos användarna och behovet av mer avancerade tillämpningar ökade. Fler och fler började då inse begränsningarna med HTML och dess enkla struktur. Metaspråket XML (eXtensible Markup Language) är ett universellt format för att strukturera dokument och data på Internet. Utveck-lingen av XML startade 1996 och antogs som en W3C-rekommendation (World Wide Web Consortsium) i februari 1998. Syftet med XML var att skapa ett betydligt mer flexibelt språk än HTML, utan att för den skull göra det mer komplext. Syftet med uppsatsen är att undersöka om det nödvändiga underhållet av presenterad information på webben (WWW) förbättras med hjälp av XML samt undersöka hur XML kan underlätta EDI (Electronic Data Interchange)via Internet. Uppsatsen fakta och påståenden bygger på en s k kvalitativ bearbetning d v s textmaterial i form av rapporter, specifikationer och böcker. I min undersökning har jag kommit fram till att XML kommer att bli ett av morgondagens stora format, både vad gäller skapandet av Internetapplikationer och som meddelandeformat för informationsöverfö-ring. Med XML kan allt från en enkel fil till avancerade affärsdokument skapas. Det som jag anser håller tillbaka XML i dagsläget är samtidigt en av dess styrkor, nämligen flexibiliteten, det vill säga möjligheten att deklarera egna märkord. Genom den här sortens flexibilitet blir även språket mer komplext jämfört med ett språk som t ex HTML. Ett av del-målen W3C satte upp vid skapandet var just att enkelheten skulle bibehållas. Detta delmål har delvis gått förlorat i XML. XML-familjen är idag relativt komplex. Samtidigt välkomnas förslagen till förbättringar och utbyggnad av utvecklarna, då det är kringstandarderna som ger XML flexibel funktionalitet. Den slutsats som kan dras av detta är att det kanske helt enkelt måste finnas en viss komplexitet i ett språk som ska kunna uträtta de saker som faktiskt XML gör.

An implementation of the Electric Field Approach applied to the simulated RoboCup is presented, together with a demonstration of a learning system. Results are presented from the optimization of the Electric Field parameters in a limited situation, using the learning system. Learning techniques used in contemporary RoboCup research are also described including a brief presentation of their results.

Siffror om könsfördelning inom IT-branschen och på högre tekniska utbildningar talar sitt tydliga språk. Andelen män inom ämnesområdena data och teknik är ofta betydligt större än andelen kvinnor. Detta kan ge till följd att samhället går miste om en stor del potentiella begåvningar. En jämnare könsfördelning brukar dessutom resultera i ett trevligare och gemytligare klimat. För att öka intresset bland kvinnliga studenter för vissa IT-utbildningar har en del universitet och högskolor ändrat utbildningsformer och innehåll. Några har även utformat särskilda program som vänder sig till kvinnor. Vi har i vårt kandidatarbete inriktat oss på tre utbildningar av den karaktären: Datateknisk utbildning för kvinnor (DUK), Datavetenskapligt program företrädesvis för kvinnor (DUR) och Datateknisk ingång för kvinnor (DTI). De viktigaste frågeställningarna som vi kommer att besvara och de slutsatser som vi har fått fram i rapporten är: Frågeställningar: Ø Finns det idag ett behov av högre tekniska utbildningar som är riktade till kvinnor? Ø Har kvinnor behov av en speciell pedagogik i högre tekniska utbildningar och vad är i så fall innebörden av den? Ø Ska man ha undervisning i klass med bara kvinnor hela utbildningen, eller är en senare integrering med program som är öppna för båda könen att föredra? Slutsatser: Ø I dagens samhälle finns det ett behov av högre tekniska utbildningar som bara är riktade till kvinnor. Ø Att studera i en kvinnlig klass resulterar i en pedagogik som anses vara av stor betydelse Ø Vikten av en integrering med andra mixade program någon gång under utbildningstiden är stor.

One of the problems when developing software is the difficulty of knowing how much that is done in a project. This is a basic condition to be able to estimate the remaining efforts with increased accuracy over time. To get accurate progress information it is important that the progress tracking is done in an objective way and also in an as simple way as possible. Our focus in this work has been software projects in general but a case study has also been performed at Ericsson Software Technology AB in Ronneby. We have studied the organization and performed interviews with project managers to find out if this really is a problem and if the process can be improved in some way to ease the task of progress tracking. This case study together with our literature study has resulted in a proposition for a solution. Our approach has been to use automated testing as a way to make progress tracking more objective. The result presented in this thesis is a base for a system that could ease the tracking of progress. In short, the system extracts information from an automated testing process and compares it with estimated figures to be able to automatically generate progress information.

As more and more people gain access to broadband in their properties, the security threats get bigger. A lot more people also have computers that they carry home from work where they store important information concerning the company. The information stored on theese computers can be very easy to retrieve if you have the will and the skill to do it. Very few people have any knowledge how to protect themselves from theese threats.