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Open source software (OSS) is a software product with the source code made public so that anyone can read, analyze, and change or improve the code. The use of this software is under a license, like Apache, GNU, MIT, Mozilla Public, and Eclipse Public License. Open source software development (OSSD) provides high quality assurance through user testing and peer reviews. The quality of these products depends on the size of the product community. This paper discusses the stakeholders of the OSS community, the quality assurance frameworks and models proposed in some studies, some statistics about OSS, the problems that affect the quality of OSSD, and the advantages and disadvantages of OSS compared to closed source software. This allows us to understand how we can achieve and improve the quality assurance and quality control of OSSD.

Project owners are important. They shall support the project manager and provide senior backing to a project. However, there are some different aspects of project ownership, which are discussed in this paper. The main research questions addressed in the paper are; how is the project owner role described in the literature, and how is the role in practice? The paper is mainly a theory review of the topic project ownership. We present a simple model for the relation between project owner, project manager and operation of the project delivery. The basis for the model and discussion is a theoretical review, but we also test the proposed model on a sample of projects. As we will see, this testing creates the need for a distinction between two types of project owners; one that is mainly concerned with supporting the project manager and enabling project delivery, the other being focused on the business case and having responsibility for both project delivery and benefit realization. There has been a development where the importance of the role as project owner has been highlighted. It is our impression that this development has had two ambitions. One is to strengthen project execution. The other ambition is to emphasize the business case perspective. These two perspectives call for different organizational positions of the persons called project owners. We urge future researchers and practitioners to clarify what type of project owner role that is referred to in different contexts. We also call for an awareness of the fact that different project owners will have different set of incentives and priorities. © 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license.

This study answers a call for more qualitative research on project management to unveil “what goes on in social construction of projects and project management”. More precisely, we focus on how trust and control are balanced in an inter-organizational project collaboration in the Norwegian petroleum industry. Our findings suggest that balancing trust and control is a significant part of the project manager role. We claim that this area is both neglected in education and training and under-researched. The aim of the paper is to provide more knowledge on the trust-control dilemma in project management. Our qualitative approach provides rich empirical examples of dilemma situations and how balancing trust and control take place in a real-life project management context. The data was collected between 2010 and 2013 and consists of observational data from project meetings, document analysis and interviews.

There is a growing emphasis on digital transformation in research and business practice. The creation of value from IT-investments is a critical factor in digital transformation. Research has documented that the ability to realize IT-value is a very challenging endeavor, especially for small enterprises who because of resource poverty are dependent on external input and cooperation with other companies. There is a general lack of research on the phenomenon of how IT-value is co-created, particularly in small firms. This paper reports from a study of a cluster of performing arts organizations, Blender Collective. They realized that audience data is a key issue, and that they lack the tools to work strategically with audiences. Blender Collective members therefore engaged in a project to develop a collaborative approach towards strategic audience development. The results expand our understanding of the dynamics related to co-creation in a cluster of small businesses. We find that co-creation can be an important avenue for small enterprises to invest in IT and realize IT-value. We propose a modified IT-value framework to explain how networks of small enterprises would co-create IT-value.

This paper analyzes and presents the solar energy research status in the GCC countries using Scopus-database. Its findings may be valuable for researchers, politicians, industry, or decision makers to see how much the participation of the GCC countries in the field of solar energy and how it compares to other countries. The data gathered from Scopus database aided in outlining and identifying the active institutions and researchers in the field of solar energy in the GCC. In terms of the largest contribution, Saudi Arabia has the highest research output (with more than 60% of the published articles in the GCC), followed by the UAE (about 17%) and the remaining percentage is the contribution of the other GCC countries.

Engineering companies that develop advanced products in multi-disciplinary new product development (NPD) teams, have difficulties in managing, communicating, and (re)using knowledge in and between NPD projects. Information is lost due to team dynamics, inappropriate documentation and methods, resulting in unnecessary design iterations, repeated problem-solving, lack of effectiveness and value, and low financial performance. It is, therefore, desirable to develop a documentation model that can be integrated into different engineering processes and used to effectively communicate product information within a single project and between projects, combining strategies from product design methodology, model-based systems engineering, and lean development. It is necessary to combine the most recent product (systems) engineering methods with the understanding of problems and needs in industrial environments where they shall be applied. This paper presents results of need finding in four companies using a semi-structured interview approach to gain insight into problems associated with product documentation. The findings are turned into a conceptual engineering-driven product documentation framework, which links documentation to the product architecture using knowledge-brief (A3) type documentation strategies from lean execution environments. © 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.Open access under a CC BY-NC-ND license.

The Systems Engineering (SE) field is moving rapidly into commercial industries. Also, SE has more recently been combined with Lean to make it more suitable for highly competitive applications. This paper seeks to explore the application of LSE in a practical project, including the design, build and test of an ultra energy-efficient vehicle for Shell Eco-marathon–—an annual world-wide student competition. The objective is to identify critical factors for implementation of LSE essentials to teams managing the development of complex products. The environment is suitable for studying LSE implementation in a controlled manner, without many of the disturbing factors in industrial projects. The cyclic nature of the project—with new teams every year working to improve last year's systems—simulates common real-world problems such as lack of value due to information lost in handoffs and deficient documentation of knowledge. A lean assessment was applied to identify fields with the greater improvement potential: knowledge management and continuous improvement. It is concluded that Visual Workflow Management provides concurrent focus in both fields, while introducing lean to manage project work. Hence, the team achieved a culture for learning, communication and making knowledge transferable; changing the team culture was essential to make LSE successful. Copyright © 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V under a CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 license.