| 1. |
- Backlund, Per
(author)
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Development Process Knowledge Transfer through Method Adaptation, Implementation, and Use
- 2004
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Information Systems Engineering (ISE) is an interdisciplinary approach to enable the realisation of successful information systems in a broad sense. ISE comprises a number of areas of expertise that must be integrated and managed in order to build information systems. Since ISE is becoming progressively more complex there is an increasing need to codify and manage knowledge within and about the ISE process. From a knowledge perspective the different model types created in an ISE project are examples of codified knowledge about the future system. The descriptions of how work should proceed are examples of codified knowledge of the process of creating the system. In summary, one of the main concerns in the ISE process is to manage the substantial amount of knowledge associated with the process as such as well as with the target domain of the actual development project and the developed software. In the thesis I recognise three areas of knowledge in ISE: development process knowledge, target domain knowledge, and software knowledge. Furthermore, I use a set of knowledge perspectives in order to describe and analyse ISE from a knowledge perspective. Finally, I introduce three aspects: organisation, artefact, and individual in order to be able to discuss and analyse how methods are actually used in organisations and how they affect the work situation. The results are presented in the form of a framework for knowledge transfer in ISE that comprises the knowledge perspective, the knowledge area, and the aspect of knowledge transfer. The framework is thus used to analyse the results from the six papers enclosed in the thesis. The results also comprise an empirical characterisation of a method in use which is based on data collected during an ethnographical study. Finally the results are made concrete in the form of a pattern collection for method introduction and method use.
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| 5. |
- Kabilan, Vandana
(author)
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Using multi tier contract ontology to model contract workflow models
- 2003
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Licentiate thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Legal Business Contracts govern the business relationshipbetween trading business partners. Business contracts are likeblueprints of expected business behaviour from all thecontracting parties involved. Business contracts bind theparties to obligations that must be fulfilled by expectedperformance events. Contractual violations can lead to bothlegal and business consequences. Thus it is in the bestinterests of all parties concerned to organise their businessprocess flows to be compliant to the stipulated businesscontracts terms and conditions.However, Contract Management and Business Process Managementin the current information systems domain are not closelyintegrated. Also it is not easy for business domain experts orinformation systems experts to understand and interpret thelegal terms and conditions into their respective domain needsand requirements. This thesis addresses the above two issues inan attempt to build a semantic bridge across the differentdomains of a legal business contract. This thesis focuses onthe contract execution phase of typical business contracts andas such views contract obligations as processes that need to beexecuted and monitored. Business workflows need to be as closeas possible to the stated contract obligation executionworkflow.In the first phase, a framework for modelling andrepresenting contractual knowledge in the form of Multi TierContract Ontology (MTCO) is proposed. The MTCO uses conceptualmodels as knowledge representation methodology. It proposes astructured and layered collection of individual ontologiesmoving from the top generic level progressively down tospecific template ontologies. The MTCO is visualised as areusable, flexible, extendable and shared knowledge base.In the second phase, a methodology for deducing the ContractWorkflow Model (CWM) is proposed. The CWM is deduced from theMTCO and a contract instance document in a stepwise userguideline. The CWM outlines the preferred choreography ofbusiness performance that successfully fulfils the execution ofcontract obligations. The deduced CWM is visualised as an aidto monitor the contract, as a starting point for businessprocess integration and business process workflow design.
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| 7. |
- Rydberg Fåhraeus, Eva, 1941-
(author)
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A Triple Helix of Learning Processes - How to cultivate learning, communication and collaboration among distance-education learners
- 2003
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- This work focuses on collaborative learning and how it canbe applied and supported in distance education. Previous workindi-cates that distance learners experience more loneliness,technical problems and lack of stimulation than face-to-facelearners do. Collaboration with peers may improve the feelingof connectedness and engagement. However, collaborativelearning is not the answer to all problems in distanceeducation--and it creates new problems. The present workexplores problems, opportunities and processes whencollaborative learning is introduced in distance education--andsuggests solutions.Related research on distance education andcomputer-supported collaborative learning is reviewed andrelated to own research. The different roles of information andcommunication technology in these areas are described.Six own research papers are reviewed and integrated. Threeof them explore university courses on computer use in society.Learners interacted mainly through a forum system, i.e. asystem for text-based, asynchronous electronic conferences anddiscussions. The special character offorum communication hadan impact on communication and collaboration processes. Onepaper summarizes these results and deduces a first list of tipsto teachers and systems designers, aiming to reduce problemsand take advantage of collabo-rative-learningopportunities.One paper, a report to the Swedish School Board, provides anoverview of research on distance education, withrecommendations for use in secondary schools.To get a broader picture of distance-education learners andtheir special situation and interests, a study was conducted inAustralia. Most of the learners were secondary-school students,living far away from towns. Communication was normallyrestricted to mail, radio and telephone. Opportunities forcollaboration between peers were rare, and correspondencetraditions and the lack of technological infrastructure weredelaying changes. However, a development towards morecollaborative learning had started.Empirical data were gathered ethnographically in naturalcourse settings. Results were analysed using 'activity theory'as a framework.The main contribution of this work is a description of howthree groups of learning processes develop and interact: (a) ofcontent, (b) of communication, and (c) of collaboration. Theyform the spiralling model of a"Triple Helix". Finally, detailed advice is given aschecklists to organisations, teachers, learners and systemdesigners.Keywords:Distance education, Collaborative learning,Computer-supported collaborative learning, Information andcommuni-cation technology, ICT, Forum system, Learningprocesses.
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| 10. |
- Sneiders, Eriks, 1968-
(author)
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Automated question answering : template-based approach
- 2002
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- The rapid growth in the development of Internet-basedinformation systems increases the demand for natural langu-ageinterfaces that are easy to set up and maintain. Unfortunately,the problem of understanding natural language queries is farfrom being solved. Therefore this research proposes a simplertask of matching a one-sentence-long user question to a numberof question templates, which cover the knowledge domain of theinformation system, without in-depth understanding of the userquestion itself.The research started with development of an FAQ(Frequently Asked Question) answering system that providespre-stored answers to user questions asked in ordinary English.The language processing technique developed for FAQ retrievaldoes not analyze user questions. Instead, analysis is appliedto FAQs in the database long before any user questions aresubmitted. Thus, the work of FAQ retrieval is reduced tokeyword matching without understanding the questions, and thesystem still creates an illusion of intelligence.Further, the research adapted the FAQ answering techniqueto a question-answering interface for a structured database,e.g., relational database. The entity-relationship model of thedatabase is covered with an exhaustive collection of questiontemplates - dynamic, parameterized "frequently asked questions"- that describe the entities, their attributes, and therelationships in form of natural language questions. Unlike astatic FAQ, a question template contains entity slots - freespace for data instances that represent the main concepts inthe question. In order to answer a user question, the systemfinds matching question templates and data instances that fillthe entity slots. The associated answer templates create theanswer.Finally, the thesis introduces a generic model oftemplate-based question answering which is a summary andgene-ralization of the features common for the above systems:they (i) split the application-specific knowledge domain into anumber of question-specific knowledge domains, (ii) attach aquestion template, whose answer is known in advance, to eachknowledge domain, and (iii) match the submitted user questionto each question template within the context of its ownknowledge domain.Keywords:automated question answering, FAQ answering,question-answering system, template-based question answering,question template, natural language based interface
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| 11. |
- Stirna, Janis, 1969-
(author)
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The Influence of Intentional and Situational factors on Enterprise Modelling Tool Acquisition in Organisations
- 2001
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Enterprise Modelling (EM) tools are an important part ofevery EM application project. Continuous evolution of modellingmethods therefore requires efficient EM tool support. Extensiveefforts have been devoted to developing new EM tools andmodelling techniques. Considerably less attention has been paidto the aspects of acquiring and introducing EM tools inorganisations. Our grounded theory study shows that thisprocess is far from simple. It is determined by theorganisation's intentions regarding EM and by the situation inthe EM user organisation. As a contribution to this, we presentan EM tool acquisition process, which focuses on selecting anappropriate EM tool acquisition scenario for an organisation.This process has the following stages - assessing theorganisation, choosing an EM tool acquisition strategy, andfollowing the EM tool acquisition strategy. We support theprocess of evaluating the situation at hand by providingguidelines for assessing intentional and situational factorsthat influence the use of EM tools.We also outline EM itself, along with its applicationprocess, and describe possible sources for gathering therequirements for an EM tool-set. Major requirements categoriesare discussed and analysed with respect to the goals andproblems regarding EM tools. Each category of requirements canbe satisfied to a certain degree, depending on theorganisational needs and various situational factors.This grounded theory study provides two main contributions.Firstly, it proposes a systematic approach for EM toolacquisition supported by a set of guidelines.The approachenables an organisation to assess its needs of EM tools and itsown appropriateness for EM tool usage. As a result, an EM userorganisation is able to choose an EM tool acquisition strategythat meets the situation it faces. This is a contribution tothe overall success of practical use of EM methods and tools.Secondly, it provides an important baseline for future researchand theory building within the area of EM tool adoption andapplication. It also gives valuable information andrequirements for development of new EM tools and relatedservices.
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| 14. |
- Zemke, Stefan, 1971-
(author)
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Data mining for prediction - financial series case
- 2003
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Hard problems force innovative approaches and attention todetail, their exploration often contributing beyond the areainitially attempted. This thesis investigates the data miningprocess resulting in a predictor for numerical series.Theseries experimented with come from financial data - usuallyhard to forecast.One approach to prediction is to spot patterns in the past,when we already know what followed them, and to test on morerecent data. If a pattern is followed by the same outcomefrequently enough, we can gain confidence that it is a genuinerelationship.Because this approach does not assume any special knowledgeor form of the regularities, the method is quite general -applicable to other time series, not just financial. However,the generality puts strong demands on the patterndetection - asto notice regularities in any of the many possible forms.The thesis' quest for an automated pattern-spotting involvesnumerous data mining and optimization techniques: neuralnetworks, decision trees, nearest neighbors, regression,genetic algorithms and other. Comparison of their performanceon a stock exchange index data is one of the contributions.As no single technique performed sufficiently well, a numberof predictors have been put together, forming a votingensemble. The vote is diversified not only by differenttraining data - as usually done - but also by a learning methodand its parameters. An approach is also proposed how tospeed-up a predictor fine-tuning.The algorithm development goes still further: A predictioncan only be as good as the training data, therefore the needfor good data preprocessing. In particular, new multivariatediscretization and attribute selection algorithms arepresented.The thesis also includes overviews of prediction pitfallsand possible solutions, as well as of ensemble-building forseries data with financial characteristics, such as noise andmany attributes.The Ph.D. thesis consists of an extended background onfinancial prediction, 7 papers, and 2 appendices.
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| 16. |
- Eriksson-Granskog, Agneta, 1957-
(author)
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General Metarules for Interactive Modular Construction of Natural Deduction Proofs
- 2003
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- This thesis proposes a set of general metarules for interactive modular construction of natural deduction proofs.Interactive proof support systems are used for the construction of formal proofs in formal program development. They support the user interaction in the derivation of programs from specifications and in the development of proofs of properties of programs. Moreover, interactive proof support systems are often general theorem provers and provide general support for proof development. Natural deduction with its similarity to intuitive informal reasoning and its lucid proof explanations is ideal for interactive proof development. However, the formal proofs in formal program development tend to be long and detailed, and metarules for the development of proofs in natural deduction would give shorter proofs and facilitate the user interaction.The focus of the thesis is the characterization of general metarules for the interactive construction of proofs in natural deduction. The solution presented supports modularity and flexibility in interactive proof development and it provides interactive construction of proofs at metalevel and facilitates the presentation of the proofs at different levels of abstraction.The main contributions are:· General metarules for modular proof development.The general metarules for the interactive construction of derivations in natural deduction support the construction of proofs from proof parts. They compute parts of proofs on the demand of the user. By computing derived rules for each application, a user has important leeway in the number of rules to use.· Flexibility in the development of proofs.The flexibility in the interactive development of proofs is supported by general metarules for changes. The method for performing changes to proofs is based upon the replacement of parts of proofs.· A proof structure supporting the development of fragmentary proofs.· Explanations of proofs at different levels in accordance with the inference rules of natural deduction and the general metarules.
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| 18. |
- Hulth, Anette, 1968-
(author)
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Combining Machine Learning and Natural Language Processing for Automatic Keyword Extraction
- 2004
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Automatic keyword extraction is the task of automatically selecting a small set of terms describing the content of a single document. That a keyword is extracted means that it is present verbatim in the document to which it is assigned. This dissertation discusses the development of an algorithm for automatic keyword extraction, and presents a number of experiments, in which the performance of the algorithm is incrementally improved.The approach taken is that of supervised machine learning, that is, prediction models are constructed from documents with known keywords. Before any learning can take place, the data must be pre-processed and represented. In the presented research, two problems concerning the representation for keyword extraction are tackled. Since a keyword may consist of more than one token, the first problem concerns where a keyword begins and ends in a running text, that is, how a candidate term is defined. In this dissertation, three term selection approaches are defined and evaluated. The first approach extracts all uni-, bi-, and trigrams, the second approach extracts all noun phrase chunks, while the third approach extracts all terms matching any of a number of empirically defined part-of-speech patterns.Since the majority of the extracted candidate terms are not keywords, the second problem concerns how these terms can be limited, to only keep those that are appropriate as keywords. In the presented research, four features for filtering the candidate terms are investigated. These are term frequency, inverse document frequency, relative position of the first occurrence, and the part-of-speech tag or tags assigned to the candidate term.The research presented in this dissertation is linguistically oriented in the sense that the output from natural language processing tools is a considerable factor both for the pre-processing of the data, as well as for the performance of the prediction models. Of the three term selection approaches, the best individual performance ― as measured by keywords previously assigned by professional indexers ― is achieved by the noun phrase chunk approach. The part-of-speech tag feature dramatically improves the performance of the models, independently of which term selection approach is applied. The highest performance is, however, achieved when the predictions of all three models are combined.
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| 20. |
- Jayaweera, Prasad M., 1967-
(author)
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A Unified Framework for e-Commerce Systems Development : Business Process Pattern Perspective
- 2004
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- In electronic commerce, systems development is based on two fundamental types of models, business models and process models. A business model is concerned with value exchanges among business partners, while a process model focuses on operational and procedural aspects of business communication. Thus, a business model defines the what in an e-commerce system, while a process model defines the how. Business process design can be facilitated and improved by a method for systematically moving from a business model to a process model. Such a method would provide support for traceability, evaluation of design alternatives, and seamless transition from analysis to realization. This work proposes a unified framework that can be used as a basis to analyze, to interpret and to understand different concepts associated at different stages in e-Commerce system development. In this thesis, we illustrate how UN/CEFACT’s recommended metamodels for business and process design can be analyzed, extended and then integrated for the final solutions based on the proposed unified framework. Also, as an application of the framework, we demonstrate how process-modeling tasks can be facilitated in e-Commerce system design. The proposed methodology, called BP3 stands for Business Process Patterns Perspective. The BP3 methodology uses a question-answer interface to capture different business requirements from the designers. It is based on pre-defined process patterns, and the final solution is generated by applying the captured business requirements by means of a set of production rules to complete the inter-process communication among these patterns.
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| 21. |
- Kajko-Mattsson, Mira, 1955-
(author)
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Corrective maintenance maturity model : problem management
- 2001
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Maintenance has become one of the most complex, crucial and costly disciplines within software engineering. Despite this, very few maintenance process models have been suggested. The extant models are too general, covering all maintenance categories, i.e., corrective, adaptive, perfective, and preventive maintenance. They do not help in acquiring a deep objective understanding of any of the maintenance categories.One way to remedy this is to create process models specialised to each maintenance category. Corrective Maintenance Maturity Model (CM3) is such a model. It is entirely dedicated to corrective maintenance. It encompasses the most important processes utilised within this domain. They are CM3: Predelivery/Prerelease, CM3: Transition, CM3: Problem Management, CM3: Testing, CM3: Documentation, CM3: Upfront Maintenance, and CM3: Maintainers' Education and Training.In this thesis, we consider in detail one of the CM3 constituent process models, CM3: Problem Management. Problem management is the basis for conducting corrective maintenance. It not only handles software problems but also provides quantitative feedback important for assessing product quality, crucial for continuous process analysis and improvement, and essential for defect prevention.Just as other CM3 constituent processes, CM3: Problem Management is based on CM3 definitions of maintenance and of corrective maintenance, and it follows the CM3 process structure. It has seven components: (1) Taxonomy of Activities, which lists a set of activities relevant for the problem management process; (2) Conceptual Model, which defines concepts relating to information about the process; (3) Maintenance Elements, which explain and motivate the implementation of maintenance process activities; (4) Process Phases, which structure the CM3 constituent processes into process phases; (5) Maturity Levels, which structure the problem management process into three maturity levels (Initial, Defined and Optimal); (6) Roles, which define the responsibilities of individuals executing the process, and (7) Roadmaps, which aid in the navigation through the problem management process.Our primary goal with the CM3 model and its constituent processes is to create a fine-grained process model that allows maximal visibility into corrective maintenance. Some of our other goals are (1) to establish a common forum for communicating about corrective maintenance, (2) to suggest an evolutionary improvement path for software organisations from an ad hoc immature process to a mature and disciplined one, (3) to enable industrial organisations to examine their own practices and compare notes, (4) to provide a pedagogical tool for universities and industrial organisations in the process of educating their students and software engineers within the area of corrective maintenance.CM3: Problem Management was built primarily for ABB. It is the result of two research projects: Software Metrics Laboratory, and Software Maintenance Laboratory. Software Metrics Laboratory was established jointly by Ericsson and the Department of Computer and Systems Sciences (DSV) at the Royal Institute of Technology and Stockholm University in the years 1994-1996. During these years, we have developed a conceptual model of the basic concepts relating to the handling of software problems within corrective maintenance. This conceptual model evolved into CM3: Problem Management: Conceptual Model (Revisited) developed during the Software Maintenance Laboratory phase - a collaboration between ABB and DSV in the years 1998-2000. Although CM3: Problem Management has been primarily developed in the ABB context, it is targeted to all software organisations involved in building or improving their corrective maintenance processes.
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| 24. |
- Malmberg, Åke
(author)
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Notations supporting knowledge acquisition from multiple sources
- 2002
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Today many organizations are geographically distributed, and the number of international organizations is increasing. Managing knowledge in a distributed organization may include a knowledge repository. An important aspect of a knowledge repository is the responsibility of maintaining the repository, to ensure that the repository is accessible and up-to-date for all users. Our research question is how to acquire knowledge from multiple sources in distributed organizations. We focus on notations used in knowledge acquisition from multiple sources in distributed organizations. We present two notations that support knowledge acquisition in distributed organizations and evaluate them in two field experiments. The first notation, SGN, was not filtered but visible to the domain experts, whereas the second notation, XML, was filtered but not visible to the domain experts. The knowledge represented by the unfiltered notation was used in the design and implementation of an experimental knowledge-based system executing in a distributed environment. The results indicate that the unfiltered notation selected was understandable, and was a good notation as a draft modeling language in the distributed knowledge acquisition process. The knowledge-based system was evaluated in field experiments during two winter seasons and the results indicate that actions proposed by the system were the same as actions taken by experts in about 50 % of the cases. The filtered notation was presented to the domain experts using a building as a metaphor for the knowledge repository. The virtual building was a peer-to-peer design, using an Intranet to communicate. By joining the building community, domain experts can share their knowledge and are able to communicate with other domain experts in the same room using modalities as audio and video. A difference in our approach compared with earlier work is that the domain experts were able to move inside the knowledge repository. The results indicate that acquiring knowledge, without an intermediary knowledge engineer, from multiple sources to a knowledge repository is facilitated by using the building metaphor. The results also indicate that the building metaphor increases the domain experts´ motivation to contribute to the knowledge repository on a regular basis.
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