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Presents five case studies of industrial software projects specifically involving prototyping. Designates projects ranging from 240 person‐years to two person‐years involving large industrial corporations to small/medium software manufacturers. Analyses the benefits and limitations of prototyping. Concludes that prototyping is conducive to the quality of the product and the development process, particularly when used in conjunction with an evolutionary development strategy and when all parties are aware of the benefits and limitations.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relative importance of project management (PM) competences across the different stages of a software project life cycle to identify competence development gaps and opportunities.

A deductive and quantitative approach was adopted to address the research questions with a web-based survey for data collection.

After reviewing the context of competences and PM competences, the importance of the PM competences overall and for specific stages in the project life cycle was analysed. The result highlights that functional and meta-competences are perceived to be the most important competence dimensions for software project practitioners.

This study makes three contributions. First, it consolidates PM competences into a set of 20 within four competence dimensions. Second, it prioritises these competences across the software project life cycle. Third, it identifies the significance of the inter-relationship between PM competences and project life cycle to reveal PM competence development gaps and opportunities.

Significant numbers of business process management (BPM) projects fail. Their failure is attributed toward many factors. Among them, low quality of BPM is one reason. Some of the tasks in BPM have their roots in business process reengineering (BPR). The literature has cited many different critical success and failure factors for quality BPM and BPR. Lack of software tools is one of the technology-oriented factors that results in poor BPM and BPR. This paper aims to build a generic feature set offered by software tools for process modeling their analysis implementation and management. It presents an objective analysis in identifying weaknesses and strengths of these tools, primarily for BPM.

A method is proposed to evaluate the quality of process reengineering and management delivered by software tools. It consists of four phases: feature extraction, tool selection, data extraction and tool evaluation.

The data gathered is quantified to test research hypotheses, the results are statistically significant and highlight multiple areas for future improvements. Moreover, the cluster visualizations created also help to understand the strengths and weaknesses of BPM/BPR tools.

Despite the research approach used, there is a chance of subjectivity when it comes to evaluating different tools.

The paper includes implications for practitioners and researchers for choosing appropriate software tool for process modeling, analysis, implementation and management, matching their requirements with BPM and BPR. It also identifies features that are missing in these tools.

This paper provides a comprehensive analysis of BPM and supporting tools, relates them to key stages of BPM life cycle and BPR methodologies. It also identifies various areas for further development in these tools.

This paper focuses on the development of a distributed rapid prototyping system via the Internet to form a framework of Internet prototyping and manufacturing for the support of effective product development. The proposed methodology is targeted at a wide audience using a disparate range of computer systems to access remotely located rapid prototyping facilities via the Internet for prototype fabrication. The methodology is useful for both educational research for teaching evolving rapid prototyping technologies and remote scientific visualization. This approach is based on the merger of object‐oriented modular software architecture and client server communications for the remote control of rapid prototyping hardware (called fused deposition modeling) via the Internet. Other Web tools are used to allow the remote user to have higher interactivity with the server applications that have a direct link with the front‐end terminals controlling the rapid prototyping hardware.

Many theories have been proposed to understand and improve the process of leadership development. One useful way to structure the literature is around three complementary perspectives, briefly summarized as the “knowing, doing and being” dimensions of leadership. While the complementarities between these perspectives have been discussed, the mechanisms by which they are linked are less clear. The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of experimentation as one such mechanism.

Building on interviews and prior literature, the authors argue that experimentation consists of two processes: task-prototyping focused on the work overseen by the leader and self-prototyping focused on how the leader relates to others. This study proposes a theoretical framework linking experimentation to action-taking (e.g. being entrepreneurial and taking on challenging assignments), which in turn links to leader effectiveness. The authors test the hypotheses on two groups of leaders (481 business school alumni and 310 financial services leaders).

The authors find evidence that both forms of experimentation provide significant explanatory power in understanding why some individuals engage in higher levels of action-taking than others. Additionally, their study confirms the central role of action-taking in leadership development.

Conceptually, this study distinguishes two dimensions of experimentation and their connection to action-taking, knowledge development and identity development. Empirically, the authors show that these two experimentation activities were significant predictors of action-taking, even after controlling for all other factors, and that action-taking (along with self-prototyping) was an important predictor of leader effectiveness. The results offer a practical framework for leadership and development professionals to use in designing and evaluating leadership development activities.

This paper aims to develop an assembly behaviour dynamic model of reheat stop valve assembly under run‐time situations and combined (assembly error, friction, fluid dynamics and thermal load behaviour) and to carry out assembly process evaluation and optimisation.

The fluid dynamic behaviour analysis is carried out for the dynamic torque characteristics of reheat stop valve and for the thermal load distribution of the valve shaft‐bush subassembly, which is used for evaluating the thermal deformation of valve shaft by using of finite elements method. The assembly behaviour dynamic model is developed by multibody dynamics theory, which is as the basis of developing virtual prototyping platform for analysing and evaluating the current assembly process.

It is revealed that the deformation (ε) of valve shaft due to the thermal load, and the assembly coaxial error (e) can change the motion clearance remarkably, which lead the dynamic properties and performance of reheat stop valve changed greatly. The current assembly behaviour variable are not optimum and the initial design clearance between valve shaft and bush 4# can be optimised by the developed virtual prototyping platform on the basis of ADAMS® API. The results of evaluation for the assembly behaviour reveal the well dynamic characteristics of reheat stop valve with the optimum assembly behaviour variable. This will be useful for improving the current assembly process of reheat stop valve.

The present assembly behaviour dynamic model based on virtual prototyping for optimum assembly process design uses only single objective optimisation (the most important clearance between valve shaft and bush 4#). For a complete optimum assembly process design has to be carried out with other three clearance variables (the clearance between valve shaft and bush 1#, bush 2# and bush 3#) together.

The present analysis provides some benchmarks for improving the current assembly process. In practice, the assembly coaxial tolerance of valve shaft‐bush subassembly and the initial design clearances must be limited strictly.

This paper provides a methodology for analysis and evaluation of reheat stop valve assembly behaviour with the consideration of combined environmental behaviours. Based on this methodology, it is possible to develop an assembly behaviour dynamic model, and further, to develop a virtual prototyping platform for analysing and evaluating the assembly process which will offer help to designers for improving the reheat stop valve assembly process.

The purpose of this technical viewpoint is to provide a commentary of how we went about using logistics prototyping as a method to engage citizens, science fiction (SF) writers and small- to medium- sized enterprises (SME’s). Six urban logistic prototypes built on the themes of future cities, community resilience and urban supply chain management (SCM) are summarized, together with details of the data collection procedure and the methodological challenges encountered. Our investigation aimed to explore the potential of logistics prototyping to develop “user-driven” and “SME” approaches to future city design and urban supply chain decision-making.

This Boston field experiment was a case study investigation conducted between May and August 2013. Qualitative data was collected using a “mixed-method” approach combining together focus groups (MIT faculty), scenarios, prototyping workshops, interviews and document analysis. These story-creators could use the prototype method as a way of testing their hypotheses, theories and constrained speculations with regard to specified future city and urban supply chain scenarios.

This viewpoint suggests that the prototyping method allows for unique individual perspectives on future city planning and urban supply chain design. This work also attempts to demonstrate that prototyping can create sufficiently cogent environments for future city and urban SCM theories to be both detected and analysed therein. Although this is an experimental field of the SCM theory building, more conventional theories could also be “tested” in the same manner.

By embedding logistics prototyping within a mixed method approach, we might be criticized as constraining its capability to map out the future – that its potential to be flexible and imaginative are held back by the equal weighting given to the more conventional component. In basing our case study within one city then this might be seen as limiting the complexity of the empirical context – however, the situation within different cities is inherently complex. Case studies also attract criticism on the grounds of not being representative; in this situation, they might be criticized as imperfect indicators of what transpires in other situations. However, this technical viewpoint suggests that in spite of its limitations, prototyping facilitates an imaginative and creative approach to theory generation and concept building.

The methodology allows everyday citizens and SME’s to develop user-driven foresight and planning scenarios with city strategists’ and urban logistic designers. It facilitates much broader stakeholder involvement in city and urban supply chain policymaking, than current “quantitative” approaches.

Logistics fiction prototyping provides a democratic approach to future city planning and urban supply chain design. It involves collectively imagining socio-technical futures and second-order sociological effects through the writing of SF narratives or building “design fictions”.

Decision-making in future cities and urban SCM is often a notable challenge, balancing the varying needs and claims of multiple stakeholders, while negotiating an acceptable trade-off between their competing claims. Engagement with stakeholders and active encouragement of stakeholder participation in the supply chain aspects of future cities is increasingly a feature of twenty-first century social decision-making. This viewpoint suggests that the prototyping method allows for unique individual perspectives on future city planning and urban supply chain design. This work also attempts to demonstrate that prototyping can create sufficiently cogent environments for future city and the urban SCM theories to be both detected and analysed therein. Although this is an experimental field of SCM theory building, more conventional theories could also be “tested” in the same manner.

Discusses the failure of end user computing (EUC) to achieve its objectives. Bases discussion on people, application and skill. Relates the problems to those of prototyping. Suggests some difficulties can be overcome by education. Presents an educational method consisting of five steps: interviews and observations, group discussions, lectures, simulation, and personal guidance.

The primary purpose of this paper is to present an integrated framework for user interface prototyping and evaluation for the development of information systems and to present architecture for evaluating generic applications.

The framework is constructed through combining two distinctive methods of prototyping and evaluation, statechart and goals, operators, methods, and selection rules. Relevant methods and architectures of the integrated framework are presented in unified modeling language when possible.

The importance of the usability of information systems is highlighted in this research. However, it still lacks an integrated framework for information system development and usability evaluation. This paper provides a framework that evaluation method is intertwined with user interface prototyping to shorten the time of development lifecycle. The architecture for evaluating generic applications is also invaluable for motion and time study and the procurement of vender‐provided systems.

The user base of information systems is diverse and the requirements of these systems change over time. This paper provides a framework that helps managers and engineers smooth and shorten the development phases. For future works, an object‐oriented programming framework and a tool for evaluating generic applications will be developed.

This paper proposes a comprehensive framework for combining prototyping and evaluation, as well as architecture for the evaluation of generic applications. It shortens the development phases by using formal modeling for user interface construction and evaluation. It also provides means to evaluate candidate systems whose program logics cannot be accessed and modified. It also complements the models used in the framework by extending their practical and academic values.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the question of whether or not there are three distinct targets of commitment in consumers' relationships with their service providers; commitment to the service company, commitment to the individual service provider, and commitment to the individual provider as a friend or acquaintance.

Initial theories regarding targets of commitment in service relationships are developed with reference to the literature in psychology, organizational behavior, and marketing. Exploratory research into the commitment construct in service relationships is conducted using a prototyping approach. The prototyping approach involves the exploration of natural language concepts including the identification of a concept's attributes, and the concept's relationship to other concepts.

The results of the prototyping analysis give us preliminary evidence to suggest that that the three targets of commitment while related, are independent. Each target of commitment has a number of unique and central attributes.

Commitment is an important variable in the study of relationship marketing; however, in most marketing studies, the target of a customer's commitment is not clearly defined, nor have potential differences between various targets of commitment been fully explored. This research highlights the fact that relationship commitment is a multi‐level variable. In addition, this research demonstrates the effectiveness of the prototyping methodology in the exploration of abstract concepts and the relationship between them.