[dipl] Perustieteiden korkeakoulu / SCI

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Achievement badges in educational context
(2013) Haaranen, Lassi
School of Science | Master's thesis
Gamification, commonly defined as game-like mechanics into an existing service, has risen as a trend in various fields, such as learning and marketing in recent years. This thesis explores the topic of gamification in all educational contexts with the main focus of achievement badges, a way to implement gamification. Two main questions are explored: how gamification can be implemented into all existing course with already established courseware and how students will react to the added gamification elements. Utilizing gamification was explored by looking at existing options, both open source and commercial, to implement such a system. However, due to various concerns a whole new system was created. The system was then implemented, with created achievement badges, to an existing course running on A+ Learning Management System as a service. The system was used for online exercises in the course. Data structures and algorithms' during the later half of the course. It was evaluated after the course against the design criteria's. In addition, students' reactions to the system and achievement badges were evaluated, by contrasting students' behaviour before and after implementation of the badges. Data was collected on student behaviour and a survey containing qualitative and quantitative questions was held after the course. Results of this survey were analysed to assess questions, how the system worked and how students reported their reactions. Based on the diverse reactions of students towards achievement badges and the evaluation of the courses feedback, we conclude that achievement badges are not for everyone. However, they seem suited for some part of the student population to motivate and guide them towards better studying habits. End of the thesis discusses these results and points out flaws in the experiment as well as offers guidance for future gamified systems.
Achieving lasting change in organization - a conceptual framework for strategy implementation
(2014) Forss, Joona
School of Science | Master's thesis
Adapting continuous integration practices in application management context: a case study
(2013) Heikelä, Jussi
School of Science | Master's thesis
Adoption of an idea management tool in a service organization
(2013) Eloranta, Tuomo Pietari
School of Science | Master's thesis
The present study has examined idea management tools and their ability to support grassroots level innovation activities from a practice theoretical perspective. Literature review revealed that majority existing research on innovation management tools follows mechanistic world view which presumes that tools have direct unilateral effect on the behaviour of the users and that the experienced benefits are mostly constituted by the technical features of the tools. Design of the tools has emphasized systematization of innovation efforts and measures aiming reduce uncertainty in development. However, research on innovation practices and practices of ICT use challenge these assumptions. Since innovation processes are inherently uncertain, the sensibility of trying to impose opposing ideals has been questioned. Also, practice research has emphasized the role of contextual factors in the constitution of practices around support tools as well as unpredictability and uncontrollability of the constitution process. Empirical single case study was conducted in a financial organization which had recently adopted an idea management tool. Research data consisted of 19 interviews, rich logs from the idea management tool and a vast array of documents related to the preparatory phase of the adoption process. Data analysis was inspired by the principles of grounded theory (Charmaz 2000) and systematic combining (Dubois and Gadde 2002). A modified version of a research frame proposed by Orlikowski (2000) for the examination of constitution of ICT related practices was used. In the case company, idea management tool was used especially for sharing raw, unpolished ideas which were outside the idea generator's formal job role. User community provided support to creative individuals by offering encouragement proposals for refinement as well as suggesting potential contacts and stakeholders. Use of the system in general was perceived as an extra role effort which presented a barrier for use. Large differences between ideas were found in the number and nature of received comments. Existing development, rewarding and inter-divisionary collaboration practices had a major impact on resulting benefits from the idea management tool adoption. Discrepancies between existing practices and new practices around the idea management tool generated tensions which hampered organizations ability to implement ideas. Tensions lead to lengthy decision making processes which eradicated the momentum which had formed around the idea. Problems started to skew idea selection practices towards favouring ideas which were easy to advance, instead evaluating ideas based on their content and other qualities. Empirical observations indicated that ensuring compatibility between local practices of different parties as well as global organizational practices such as rewarding is a key issue in ensuring success in idea management tool adoption and innovation efforts in general.
Agile requirements engineering with interactive prototyping: Case study
(2013) Käpyaho, Marja
School of Science | Master's thesis
The rise of agile methodologies in software development has led to abandonment of many traditional tools. Especially requirements engineering is in a state of confusion as the more traditional model isn't applicable as it is but new models are only just being developed. The area of agile requirements engineering is lacking concrete models of doing things and needs more research. In this thesis I investigated how the challenges of agile requirements engineering can be met with interactive prototyping. To research this I first tried to find the biggest challenges faced when doing requirements engineering in agile projects and then looked into how interactive prototyping could help in solving these problems. To investigate the research questions I looked into previous literature as well as carried out a case study based on an agile project and its practices during a year. As a result of both methods I developed a model for doing requirements engineering in agile projects. The results of the research indicated that agile requirements engineering can be practiced with rather similar methods as more traditional requirements engineering but with emphasis more on continuous communication and less on documents. Some of the biggest requirements engineering challenges faced in agile projects were insufficient communication, lack of tangible plans, neglecting quality and architectural requirements and lack of understanding the big picture. Of these four challenge areas the former two benefit most from prototyping whereas the latter two can even be worse off because of too much emphasis on short term visible features. The results seem to indicate that prototyping can be beneficial for agile projects as long as it is used in conjunction with some other methods that complement it suitably. These other methods could include keeping track of quality requirements, reviewing the big picture at regular intervals and building acceptance tests based on prototypes.
An analysis of a service station chain - A business network perspective
(2013) Vartiainen, Valtteri
School of Science | Master's thesis
Networks are widely used for organizing production in industries such as construction, fashion, and oil and gas. However, network analysis has not been used to describe functioning logic of a central organization in the business of service station operations. Based on a literature review on networks and inter-organizational relationships, a business network perspective is introduced to guide the case study involving four service stations of ABC chain. Altogether, the empirical data analysed in this thesis consist of 17 personal interviews representing six different organizations, and a broad range of both public and confidential material including news reports, annual reports and internal documents. The objective of this thesis is to explain how business networks can create value for their participating actors in the context of service station business in Finland. Business networks are defined as dynamic organization forms consisting of a set of interconnected organizational actors that control different kind of resources and perform different types of business activities in interaction with each other to create value. In order to explain the functioning logic of ABC service station chain, this study examines what changes have affected the chain's development and what are the key actors and their relationships of four service station networks. This thesis concludes in three sets of findings. First, critical events concerning the development of ABC chain are presented through three separate phases identified. Second, four business networks of individual service stations are examined, pinpointing key actors, their roles, and activities between organizations. The results indicate that there exist multiple complementary actors operating in same premises, a tenancy or close proximity of service stations that attract customers to visit service stations. Third, a cross-case analysis is conducted to propose four inter-organizational mechanisms of value creation. These mechanisms include both conscious and unconscious interactions and organizational coordination, such as different developmental activities that aim to enhance the functioning and value creation of ABC chain. This study increases understanding on ABC chain's development to the leading service station chain in Finland. Further, this thesis complements existing knowledge concerning network structures in the area of service station operations, with an emphasis on built environment. In addition, new information about inter-organizational mechanisms of value creation of a service station chain is provided. The results of this study have implications for practitioners responsible for managing stakeholder relationships and supply chains of inter-organizational networks in the context of service station business, where value creation logic can be developed and efficiency of operations improved.
Analyzing time-series RNA-seq data for T helper 17 cell differentiation mouse and human
(2012) Rautio, Sini
School of Science | Master's thesis
T helper (Th) cells are white blood cells that play a critical role in immune-mediated diseases. Th cells are divided into subclasses based on their cytokine production. Depending on the antigen, cytokine environment and co-stimulatory signals naïve CD4+ Th cells can differentiate into recently identified T helper 17 cells. The discovery of Th17 cells has provided new insights into host defense and autoimmune diseases. To identify novel factors involved in Th17 cell differentiation we have analyzed time-series RNA-Seq data of activated Th cells and Th17 cells in mouse and human. This master's thesis describes the steps of computational analysis of RNA-Seq data, including preprocessing, clustering of samples and genes, differential expression calling and gene set enrichment analysis. The comprehensive gene expression data set allows us to study how the Th17 differentiation is modified with additional cytokines and how reducing the expression of aryl hydrocarbon receptor changes the differentiation process in mouse. In this thesis we compare results from two widely used tools for calling differential expression. We also compare our RNA-Seq results to the microarray data of human Th17 cells. Despite the very active research on T helper cell differentiation, most of the studies have been generated using mouse models. A central aim of this study was to find genes, which are regulated in both species. We develop a Gaussian process regression method to compare gene expression dynamics in mouse and human in more detail. We have found thousands of genes which are regulated during the differentiation of Th17 cell and identified those genes, which are common between human and mouse. This analysis gives a good basis for further experimental studies and provides directly testable novel biological hypotheses. The results are mainly reported as enriched gene sets and detailed results are saved for later publication.
Application Design on Information Centric Networks
(2013) Mungai, Evans
School of Science | Master's thesis
Over a span of three decades the requirements by users and applications of the Internet have changed from what they were in the beginning. It is used more for distribution than resource sharing which is what its architecture was designed for. This has brought new challenges. To solve this, academic research in the field of Future Internet Architectures (FIA) has led to different new Internet Architecture proposals known as Information Centric Network (ICN) architectures. However, little has been done to validate how these architectures fit into the real world. The aim of this thesis is to validate how the PURSUIT architecture, one of the FIA proposals, fits in the real world. This will be done through porting an open source collaborative editor on top of Blackadder, the prototype of the PURSUIT architecture. This architecture follows a publish/subscribe model where data is published into, and subscribed from the network by applications. Unlike Host Centric Networks (HCN) networks, ICN networks do not identify hosts, rather the data is named and any interested party would use the names to access data from the network. Due to this nature of ICN networks, this thesis will propose a server-less design as the approach to developing distributed applications on top of ICN networks, through porting a collaborative editor. The porting experiment will follow this server-less based design as opposed to the more common client/server model that the collaborative editor has been designed in. After the porting exercise, we shall evaluate our findings through measuring quality metrics and performing static analysis. The quality metrics will show that there will be increase in complexity of the design mainly because of having the client applications and the network dissolve the functions that the server performs. A new dimension of concurrency control of state within a distributed network will be realized. In a client/server model, the requests to the server are serialized, hence not having the concurrency control challenge. However, this will not be researched on in this thesis. We shall propose to have this as a future research area.
Applying demand and supply-based operating modes to healthcare service management
(2013) Isomeri, Outi
School of Science | Master's thesis
In this study the main objective is to develop more understanding on healthcare service demand segmenting and how to organize the supply of them to meet their demand. Recently a new framework has been suggested that take into account both the demand and the supply of healthcare services and it categorizes patient into seven different demand and supply operating modes (DSO modes) according to their treatment path. The modes are Prevention, Emergency, One visit, Project, Elective, Cure, and Care. This study's objective is to test a theoretical framework of health care patient categorization in practice with data given from the Finnish National Institute of Health and Welfare. The subject will be also wider in relevant literature in order to test its theoretical logic and other frameworks in this field. Many different approaches towards health care categorization can be found from the literature and they all examine health care from different perspectives. The DSO-mode approach is in line with the most of them trying to take all aspects into consideration. The DSO-model correlates strongest with the demand, supply and focus based approaches of health care services, but it has similarities with the population, resource and industrial based approaches as well and classification according to this DSO-mode framework seems theoretically logical. The DSO-modes turned out to be comprehensive and every patient could be categorized in a mode. The emergency and cure modes were the largest of the modes based on the amount of patients. It could be said that the DSO-modes are collectively exhaustive, but they weren't totally mutually exclusive, because some patients could belong to two or more modes based on the given data. Dividing patient episodes according to the DSO-modes was interesting and informative. Examination of each mode gave more information for health operations management and showed existing problems. Categorization of patients is always difficult, but the division between these modes was made clear and definite. In each group possible sources of error were identified and solving these issues will make further studies on this subject more reliable and further studies on this topic are recommended.
An attention-based view of strategic initiatives
(2013) Valli, Joosef
School of Science | Master's thesis
Theories of attention building on the idea that, to explain firm behaviour is to explain how scarce attention is allocated in the firm, have recently become influential in strategic management. Extant research has tended to focus on two types of attention processes: 1) how attention is sought from the bottom-up, and 2) how it is allocated from the top-down. Although both directions of influence occur simultaneously, there has been very little research attempting to combine attention seeking and attention giving into an integrated framework which is what this thesis purports to do. Resource allocation to strategic initiatives is the context where attention in this thesis is studied. It is an established research stream that has to a large extent been built around the top-down -bottom-up dichotomy and is therefore an ideal conceptual setting to study how attention is allocated and what implications ensue. Despite the theoretical similarities between resource and attention allocation, very little research has looked at them together. The thesis builds a simulation model where strategic initiatives compete for top management attention by signalling of potential performance improvements. Top management, on the other hand, chooses to prioritize initiatives based on five simple heuristics: either initiatives with 1) strong track records, 2) weak track records, 3) high future performance potential, or 4) high potential to contribute to firm performance are prioritized, or then 5) no one is prioritized. The thesis investigates the attention allocation patterns that emerge under the different heuristics, and their implications to firm performance in a complexity-theory model that assumes initiative-level activities to interact with one another. The results show that both stable and shifting attention patterns can lead to good organizational performance. Furthermore, in situations where costs of seeking management attention are low, prioritizing initiatives with strong track records leads to the counter-intuitive outcome where an initiative's priority level and the amount of attention that it receives are inversely related. The result occurs because having achieved good performance in the past makes it harder to keep on improving performance. When costs of seeking attention are low enough, lower priority initiatives will end up consuming management's attention. The thesis contributes to the theory of attention by investigating top-down and bottom-up attention processes at the same time. It also sheds light on the dynamics of attention allocation and the implications of attention on firm performance, and helps advance an attention-based view of strategic initiatives. Finally, the thesis extends a well-established model of complexity to include micro-level optimization.
Automated exchange of distributed status information of building elements
(2013) Aro, Jukka
School of Science | Master's thesis
Status information of building elements in a building project is currently exchanged in a number of ways, including the document-based transfer of information and informal ways of communication. Automating the exchange of status information is expected to reduce duplicated work, save time and eliminate errors. In this thesis, a proof of concept for automating the exchange of distributed status information of building elements was implemented based on a set of selected requirements. The implementation consists of a distributed system based on the publish-subscribe paradigm. Each party in a building project can start receiving updates to status information by registering subscriptions to the status attributes he is interested in. Each party responsible for producing status attributes acts as a publisher for them, triggering automatic updates to all subscribers to those attributes. The implementation follows the constraints of Representational State Transfer (REST) for the definition of its APIs with each party having its own status exchange server accessible through a REST API. Each server has an RDF database for storing status information, subscriptions and network configuration. The status exchange server was implemented using the Python programming language and Django REST framework. The servers were deployed with virtual server images that could be easily cloned for various parties in a building project. For demonstrating the functionality of the system, an exemplary status exchange client was implemented on top of the Open API of Tekla Structures using C# and Microsoft .NET framework. The evaluation of the proof of concept showed positive results from the use of the publish-subscribe paradigm as the basis for the implementation and REST as its architectural style. While the great majority of the elicited requirements were met successfully, certain characteristics of the implementation could create undesired temporal bindings to the exchange of status information. As the identified deficiencies were likely to restrict the applicability of the implementation to different building projects, they were analysed and solutions were proposed for eliminating them.
Barriers to innovation in a media company
(2013) Sormunen, Tomi Tapani
School of Science | Master's thesis
Bayesian Network Model of Maritime Safety Management
(2013) Valdez Banda, Osiris Alejandro
School of Science | Master's thesis
Maritime traffic operations encompass several activities that, due to their general characteristics, compromise the safety of the personnel at sea and ashore. Maritime safety management and its derived standards have constantly reviewed, evaluated and improved the general conditions of the mentioned operations. Nevertheless, the correct use and application of maritime safety management standards will always depend on the particular interpretation by maritime safety experts. Thus, the combination of maritime safety standards and the knowledge of maritime experts is and will always be an important factor that influences the course of safety management in maritime traffic operations. This thesis provides a new proposal for the modeling of maritime safety management: the Bayesian Network Model of Maritime Safety Management. The model integrates the most relevant components of maritime safety management within the content of maritime safety management standards, the interpretation of safety management by maritime safety experts, and several practical indicators of the maritime safety performance. In order to model the safety management in maritime traffic, this study has adopted Bayesian networks methodology due to its remarkable characteristics for modeling uncertain expert knowledge. Furthermore, the proposed model has also been tested through a practical application in the local shipping industry. The aims during this test were to analyze dependencies and logic of the components of the model, and also to collect expert knowledge and information regarding to current maritime safety management practices. Thus, the obtained results in this thesis propose and evaluate the possibility of using Bayesian networks as a tool to model and analyze the safety management of maritime traffic operations.
Binary sequencing for companion diagnostics
(2013) Katawutpoonphan, Kritsada
School of Science | Master's thesis
Business opportunities for a power utility as an owner of wave power technology
(2013) Uotila, Riku
School of Science | Master's thesis
This master's thesis studied the opportunity for a power utility if it were to invest and own wave power technology. Wave power is a renewable energy resource that is currently totally untapped and holds a large potential. The technology to harness this resource is currently under development and this thesis aims to study would it be beneficial for the power utility and for the company developing the technology that the utility would be an owner of that company. The analysis is based on theory from industry evolution, technology development and corporate venture capital. Particular focus is on studying the opportunities that are created when power utility is minority or majority owner in technology development company during the technology development phase when demonstration and pilot projects are planned and deployed. The study creates future outcome scenarios based on theory about technological diffusion and supports decision making with valuation logic how to assess the future value of this emerging technology. A set of opportunities are identified and valued. These opportunities lie in the customer-supplier connection of a technology supplier and a power utility. Power utility gives credibility to the technology developer and supports the early growth by being the first customer. This opportunity is based on the fact that the utility is eventually the end customer of the technology and it has additional incentive to invest into demonstration projects. First, the utility would gain a valuable wave power site and a project with sufficient subsidies should be interesting enough. Secondly, the project should increase the value of the technology developer thus granting creating further value for the utility. Third, the utility is helping to create a new renewable energy generation industry securing its position in it.
Business transformation apraisal model
(2013) Micliuc, Christian Adrian
School of Science | Master's thesis
Business IT alignment has been rated as a top concern of executives during past decades. The empirical studies revealed clear evidences that companies with their business aligned with the IT tend to outperform their competitors. However strategic alignment is not a trivial achievement and it is not a static stage, but a continuous journey which constantly transforms the business having as driver the way IT usage can be leveraged in order to obtain business value. This study examines existing knowledge on strategic alignment and what is needed for achieving a reliable foundation for execution. An aggregated business transformation model is proposed to be used as an extendable base to change the business using a process governed by highlighted strategic initiatives and composed of five steps. First step is business IT alignment maturity assessment using Luftman framework and benchmarking. Second step is generation of current business model and its expected evolution using Osterwalder Business Canvas. Third step consist of IT landscape analysis focusing on identifying manual actions that can be automated, integrations which can be improved or removed and other bottlenecks. Forth step involve service redesign focusing on process streamlining, optimization, standardizations and customer experience improvements. Last step, the fifth step, includes prioritized implementation of alignment projects. The Business Transformation Appraisal Model (BTAM) was applied in a study case for a multinational industrial maintenance company headquartered in Finland. Due to confidentiality reasons this thesis presents just the alignment maturity assessment results and benchmarking followed by suggestions of improvement. The objective of the study is to identify if theoretical models can bring value to a clear industry case in order to pinpoint the alignment strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats and present an actionable list with opportunities for improvement and prioritized actions.
A case study on improving software development effort estimation in a medium-sized software company
(2013) Böckelman, Sebastian
School of Science | Master's thesis
Choosing the implementation technology for content-driven mobile service
(2013) Zvonkov, Anton
School of Science | Master's thesis
Smartphones are becoming a more and more essential part of our lives, and the share of mobile users from overall Internet usage is continuously growing. Internet service providers have noticed this shift, and are increasingly interested in making the service available also for mobile users. There are multiple different technologies available to implement a mobile service, each having their pros and cons. High fragmentation of mobile platforms makes it infeasible to implement a mobile service for only one platform, leading to a need of supporting multiple mobile platforms. Technologies based on web standards are seen as a very promising alternative technology choice, as they make it possible to develop a single application, which simultaneously works as a mobile web service, and is also made available in multiple application stores. The goal of this thesis is to define and categorize the technology choices that are most viable for implementing a content driven mobile service. Platform specific choices, web technologies and combinations of these two are introduced. The second goal is to use literature review and case studies (Taloussanomat, Veikkaus, World Design Capital 2012 and Katsomo) to find variables that may affect the choice of implementation technology for mobile service. Two models are formed based on the findings to support mobile technology choice: model of five implementation options and model of variables that affects the choice of technology for mobile service. In the model of technology choices, five currently most viable choices to implement a mobile service are introduced: platform-specific implementations, web technology based approach and hybrid applications, which combine native and web technologies. The other model describes the variables that affect the choice of technology for mobile service. It is based on definition of successful digital service, which is constructed with three components: successful business, great user experience and high-quality technology implementation. In this thesis I suggest that these two models should be used to support the process of finding out the best technology choice for mobile services. It should be noticed that the model that describes the implementation options reflects just the most viable options at a time writing this thesis, and it must be updated when any new options with high potential are discovered.
Cloud databases for Internet-of-Things data
(2013) Phan, Thi Anh Mai
School of Science | Master's thesis
The vision of the future Internet of Things is posing new challenges and opportunities for data management and analysis technology. Gigabytes of data are generated everyday by millions of sensors, actuators, RFID tags, and other devices. As the volume of data is growing dramatically, so is the demand for performance enhancement. When it comes to this Big Data problem, much attention has been paid to cloud computing and virtualization for their unlimited resource capacity, flexible resource allocation and management, and distributed processing ability that promise high scalability and availability. On the other hand, the types and nature of data are getting more and more various. Data can come in any format, structured or unstructured, ranging from text and number to audio, picture, or even video. Data are generated, stored, and transferred across multiple nodes. Data can be updated and queried in real time or on demand. Hence, the traditional and dominant relational database systems have been questioned whether they can still be the best choice for current systems with all the new requirements. It has been realized that the emphasis on data consistency and the constraint of using relational data model cannot fit well with the variety of modern data and their distributed trend. This led to the emergence of NoSQL databases with their support for a schema-less data model and horizontal scaling on clusters of nodes. NoSQL databases have gained much attention from the community and are increasingly considered as a viable alternative to traditional databases. In this thesis, we address the issue of choosing the most suitable database for Internet of Things big data. Specifically, we compare NoSQL versus SQL databases in the cloud environment, using common Internet of Things data types, namely, sensor readings and multimedia data. We then evaluate their pros and cons in performance, and their potential to be a cloud database for the Internet of Things data.
Co-developing strategy - Using the design game methodology in strategy development
(2013) Heikkinen, Kati
School of Science | Master's thesis
Strategy development has traditionally been an exclusive task of senior managers. However, several arguments can be found from the literature, which support the inclusion of other organizational members already in the early phase of strategic renewal. These reasons include for example faster knowledge acquisition and more effective implementation of strategic decisions. So far there have been only few studies that research the inclusion of other organizational members on strategy making in practice. This thesis studies the use of a specific co-design method, a design game, to support wider participation on strategy making. The theoretical part of the thesis advances understanding about the factors that enable wider participation on strategy development in an organization. These factors can be divided into two different categories. On one hand, there are factors that facilitate new knowledge creation in a cross-functional collaboration within an episode that aims at developing strategy. On the other hand, there are also factors in the larger scale, embedded in the organizational culture, which may enable or disable cross-functional strategy development. The empirical case study is conducted in an organization that has previous experience in cross-functional strategy development. In addition to the background interviews, the design game methodology and its applicability into strategy development in cross-functional teams is being examined. The design game is adapted from the field of design, and it is originally developed for co-designing a product or service in collaboration with different stakeholders. The thesis provides a framework that demonstrates the factors that enable cross-functional participation, as well as the use of the design game methodology in strategy development. The results provide understanding how the design game methodology can support wider participation on strategy making.

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