Center for Organization & Information
Graduation procedure
Agenda
 Procedure of a final thesis project
 Research domains and projects
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Research Group
Organisation and Information
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Prof: Prof.dr. Sjaak Brinkkemper
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UHD: Dr. Ronald Batenburg
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UD:
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PHD:
PHD:
PHD:
PHD:
PHD:
PHD:
Prof.dr.ir. Remko Helms
Dr. Slinger Jansen
Dr. Marco Spruit
Dr. Fabiano Dalpiaz
Dr. mult Jan Martijn van der Werf
Dr. Floris Bex
Dr. Wienand Omta
Jurriaan van Reijsen
Eko Handoyo
Erik Jagroep
Ravi Khadka
Ivonne Mangula
Michiel Meulendijk
Research theme
Product Software:
Enterpreneurship
Methodology of Development, Implementation,
and Entrepreneurship
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Societal
Perspective
Research framework
Resource
Provisioning
Laws and
Regulations
• Technology
• Educational system
• Capital
• Intellectual property
• Import & Export
Entrepreneurship
• Start-ups
• Business models
• Business culture
Economy
• Markets
• Industry structures
Strategic Management
• Product investment
• Resource management
• International organization
Company
perspective
Product Strategy
• Market analysis
• Product lifecycle management
• Technology management
Development
Perspective
• Methods and Project Mgmt
Requirements
Architecture
• Release Planning
• Design methods
• Product lines
Sales and Services
Process & Quality
● Knowledge management
Development
• Programming
• Testing
• Config. management
• Services portfolio
• Marketing
• Localization and customizations
● Quality systems
Deployment
• Beta and Launch
• Documentation
• Upgrading
Usage
• Installation
• Licensing
• Usage feedback
Society is our lab!
MBI research master
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Participation in scientific research
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Collecting data
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Empirical validation
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Experimentation in practice
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Writing scientific paper
You are our lab workers!
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Work under the supervision of experienced researchers
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Employers will greatly appreciate scientific grounded research work!
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Lead research investigations
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Graduation - Principles
 Scientific contribution
– In sync with the group’s research interest
– Resulting in scientific paper
 Societal contribution
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Graduation – Guidelines 1
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General thesis project coordination: Slinger
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www.cs.uu.nl/groups/OI (Education -> Graduation) for detailed guidelines
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40 ECTS + 4 ECTS (MBI Colloquium) + 1 ECTS (Intro2MBI)
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1 A4 with thesis description; Scope and subject in sync with group’s
research interests
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Thesis proposal document
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Deliverables:
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Thesis document
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(Scientific) paper
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As desired by company
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Active participation and presentations MBI Colloquium
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Graduation – Guidelines 2
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Internal and external projects
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2 supervisors from UU; 1 or more from the company
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Start only after approval of thesis proposal document by all
supervisors
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Thesis: societal AND scientific contribution
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Thesis evaluation criteria available
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Thesis examination:
– Thesis document, paper
– Thesis defence/presentation
– Based on evaluation criteria
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Thesis project – approach (1)
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Thesis project – approach (2)
Research
strategy
Goal
Approach
Data-type
Analysis
Qualitative
Explore. What
is X? What
does X mean?
Interpretation
and Induction.
Texts, photo’s,
observations,
interviews.
Flexible, fast.
Qualitative and
quantitative
data on one
particular
case.
Qualitative
methods,
group,
compare,
cluster.
Survey
Describe, how
many, how
often, to what
degree.
Explanatory
and testing.
Standardized
interviews,
broad,
general.
Responses to
variables from
many
respondents.
SPSS, Uni- en
multivariate
analysis of a
datamatrix
Experimental
Causal
relations. Why
is X. Testing
and/or
explanatory
Laboratory
situation
Information for
a limited
number of
variables and
respondents
Analysis of
differences
Design
Innovation,
Improve
Investigate,
apply, create,
invent
Models,
prototype,
feedback
Empirical
validation
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Thesis Contents Arc
CH3
CH2
Sub question1
Activity1
Answer1
Sub question2
Activity2
CH4
Answer2
Sub question3
Activity3
Answer3
CH5
.
.
.
CH1
Problem
statement
Research
question
.
.
.
.
.
.
CH6
Sub questionn
Activitym
Answern
CH7
Discussion
and
CH8
Conclusion
• CH1: Short introduction into subject matter
• CH2: Problem statement, research question, research
method, validity defence
• CH3: Usually the literature study that already answers
several sub questions.
• CH4-CH…: Several conducted activities and results from
those activities to provide (partial) answers to the sub
questions. Includes result analysis chapters.
• CH7: Discuss how the research method and the research in
general went. Describe at least whether this research
method chosen was appropriate. Point out weaknesses in
the research.
• CH8: Generally a short chapter summarizing all the sub
questions and the answers to them. Also a place to
describe future work (if not in H7).
Traceability
• Make sure that:
– The research questions follow from the problem
statement
– The research methods follow from the research
questions
– The data follows from the research methods
– The analysis follows from the data
– The conclusions follow from the analysis
– Such that:
• The conclusions solve the problem statement!
• (tip: imagine what the end-result is going to be
from the very beginning.)
Some pitfalls
•
Research theme too broad or not innovative
– Example “e-Health in Europe and the US”
– Example “Critical Success Factors for ERP Implementation”
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Research company not innovative
– Develop a functional and technical design for an admin system
– Implement Sharepoint for us, and make sure it’s adopted
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Research theme too far from profs interest
– Example: Economic drivers for small accountancy firms (IT?)
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Too much work
– I made an overview of all the literature, and it cost me 6 months
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Slow start means slow ending
– Well, I finished my long proposal after four months, but now I think I’ll work much faster
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“But the company is so interesting, they offered me a job already!”
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“I am almost done, all I have to do is write the thesis.”
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“I don’t care about the topic, as long as I can become a consultant.”
• http://mbiprojects.wordpress.com/
• http://www.cs.uu.nl/groups/OI/index.php?id=
3&subid=2
And now for the individual
presentations
Sjaak Brinkkemper
Research Interests
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Methodology of product software development
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Method Engineering
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ICT Entrepreneurship and Software Industry
Finished projects
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Requirements engineering decision making: decision characteristics for
product change requests (Jaap Kabbedijk @ Lund University)
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An implementation method for disease management software (Juliette van
Hövell @ VitalHealth)
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The difference between proJEct management and proDUct management
(Christina Manteli @ internal)
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A knowledge infrastructure for product software development (Baldur
Kristjansson@ Levi9)
Running projects
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SPM competence model for product line development (@ CCV)
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Open projects Sjaak Brinkkemper
Product Software
1.
Software licensing and contracting in multi-tenant on-line software
2.
Financial estimations for the ICT start-up business model
3.
Models for export of on-line software products
4.
Success patterns in ICT entrepreneurship, a comparison between India, US and
Europe (IIIT, Hyderabad)
5.
Determinants of success or failure of venture capital driven ICT start-ups versus selfstarters
6.
Quality estimations for Functional Architectures
7.
Outsourcing in the Software Industry: Knowledge infrastructures and Product
knowledge centers
Software Product Management
1.
Effectiveness of Scrum for Product Management
2.
Situational methods for product roadmapping and portfolio management
3.
The interplay of requirements and architecture in very large scale requirements
engineering
4.
Linguistic techniques in requirements organization
Method Engineering
1.
E-Method – a Online Method Engine for situational method support
2.
Method mash-ups– combining tools in methods
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Slinger’s research
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VisualizeKo – Visualizing software ecosystems
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CoCoDeploy – Composition and Configuration of Model Driven
Applications in Ecosystem Architectures
Themes
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Entrepreneurship
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Case study research methods
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Software ecosystems
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Ecosystem architectures
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Model driven architecture
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Software business
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Available Topics (Slinger)
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Modeling the Games Ecosystem
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Mining software repositories for software ecosystem health determination
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Measuring the speed of innovation in software ecosystems
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Visualizing Software Operation Knowledge at AFAS
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Creating a maturity matrix for Customer Configuration Updating practices
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Financial modeling for software ecosystems
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Software ecosystem modeling
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Pattern Adoption in the Product Software Industry
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Servicification for Multi-tenancy
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Software Ecosystem Suitability Metrics
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Model Driven Software Development
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Dynamic App Composition
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Several Ecosystem Projects at Uni-Darmstadt, Finland – Jyvaskyla uni, UCL, SAP @ Walldorf,
etc.
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Several entrepreneurship related topics (at UtrechtInc. or Rockstart)
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My Contacts @
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Master thesis SleepCare
Contact person: Robbert Jan Beun
www.ikgalekkerslapen.nl
Mobile coaching
Domain: Sleep therapy
Domain sleep therapy
•The role of sensor measurement
•Dialogue design in mobile systems
•Design of mobile exercises
•Avatars for mobile coaching
•Persuasive techniques and virtual coaching
•Momentary assessment for sleep
•Feasibility study for valorization
•And many more …
Fabiano Dalpiaz
 Research interests
– Design of socio-technical systems
• Not only software, but people and
organizations too!
– Gamified Software Engineering
• How to turn software engineering into
a participatory and engaging activity?
– Game production
• Requirements, serious games, reuse,
business models
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Some Running/completed projects
 Gamified tutorials: the case of operations research
(H. Constantin)
 Designing secure software systems (N.
Argyropoulos)  will start a PhD at U Brighton, UK
 Crowd-centric requirements engineering (R.
Snijders)  already a workshop paper in the first
part of the thesis, trip to U Bournemouth, UK
 Modeling the product environment (T. Muelders)
 Requirements engineering for serious games (T.
Katsikarelis)
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Fabiano’s thesis topics
 Production of serious games: from craft to discipline
 Requirements engineering for games: how is it different?
 Reuse in game production: towards games product lines
 Gamifying the software engineering process
 Crowdsourcing as a novel computational paradigm
 Gamified software tutorials
 Crowd-centric requirements engineering
 More topics are available, and your ideas are welcome!
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Marco Spruit
 Recent MSc
theses:
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Cepoi,Alex
(2014/08/21). A
Reference Architecture for
a Dynamic Competitive
Intelligence Solution.
(Jibes)
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Vlug,Bas
(2014/06/26). Effective
and Efficient Classification
of Topically-Enriched
Domain-Specific Text
Snippets. (AFAS)
 Open projects:
http://m.spru.it/edu/msc/open
Graduation projects
Jan Martijn van der Werf
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Jan Martijn van der Werf
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Research interests
 Software architecture
 Architectural intelligence
 Modeling & architecture
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PhD students
 Erik Jagroep: Sustainability in Software Architecting
 Leo Pruijt: Architecture reconstruction
 Garm Lucassen: on the relation between SPM, RE and SA
(together with Fabiano Dalpiaz)
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Software Architecture
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“The set of structures needed to reason about the system,
which comprise software elements, relations among them, and
properties of both.”
Example topics:
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Evolution in Software Architecture Modeling
Relation between RE and SA
Role and impact of SA at Independent Software Vendors
Architecture reconstruction
Modeling behavior (scenarios) in SA
Effect of cloudification on SA
Example projects
 Method for functional software product evolution (@AFAS)
 Dynamics of Software Product Management & SA
 On the relation between Functional Architecture and APM
(@Nedtrain)
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Architectural Intelligence
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Use of execution data of software to analyze and improve
(the quality of) software architecture
 Specifying and modeling of quality attributes in Software
Architecture
 Process & data mining on running software
 Software Operations Knowledge
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Example projects
 Software operation Knowledge to improve software
architecture (@AFAS)
 Greener Software by means of the Software Architecture
(@Centric)
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Arjan de Kok
Research Topic
The New Way of Working (Het Nieuwe Werken)
and the role of ICT & Knowledge Management
 New working principles (result driven)
 ICT (media use, BYOD)
 KM (information sharing, channel choice)
Example projects
- Kok, A. de, Koop, J., and Helms, R. W. (2014).
Asessing the New Way of Working : Bricks, Bytes
and Behavior. @PACIS2014
- Kok, A. de., Bellefroid, B. & Helms, R.W. (2013). Knowledge
Sharing and Channel Choice: Effects of the New Way of Working.
@ECKM2013
Potential projects (Arjan de Kok)
 ICT use & optimization
– Which ICT tools support NWOW best and how can they be
optimized in a specific situation to improve NWOW
implementations?
– (Multiple) Case study at companies using NWOW
 Information storage & usage
– Which information is essential for the knowledge worker and how
can this information best be stored and used in a NWOW
environment?
 Knowledge sharing in the NWOW environment
– How is knowledge / information shared between knowledge
workers and what is needed to improve knowledge sharing in an
NWOW environment ?
 Contact: a.dekok@uu.nl
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Remko Helms
 Research interests
– Knowledge Sharing and Collaboration in
Online Networks
– Social Media Strategy & Web Analytics
 Running/finished projects (examples)
– Social media strategies of product software companies
@Truffle100 companies
– Growing online communities: interaction patterns in
sustainable online communities @KvK @Sydney University
– Tie strength model for reconstructing collaboration
networks @Github
– Gamification of IT training @NS
– Social Engineering @EY (and their clients)
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Example: Patterns in growing online
communities
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Open Projects (Remko Helms)
 Knowledge sharing patterns in online
communities @KVK and other data sets
 Open Data as driver for Innovation (NWO KIEM Kiem
grant with ‘Big Data School’ of UU)
– 2 students (full-time) and teaching assistantship available
 Projects at Vellekoop & Meesters in non-profit on ICT
strategy, chain management and social media
 Social engineering assessment method @EY
 Social Media Strategy @Budeco
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Contacts (Remko Helms)
 Contacts at various consultancy companies small and
large
 Contacts abroad
– University of Melbourne (Australia) – Knowledge and
content management
– Victoria University (Canada) – Collaboration patterns in
open source projects
– Stockholm School of Economics – Crowd sourcing &
innovation networks
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Ronald Batenburg
 Profile
– Employed for 1 day a week at UU/MBI
– Employed for 4 days a week at the Netherlands institute
for Health Services research (NIVEL)
– Background in social and organization sciences,
quantitative research methods, surveys
 Research interests
– IS/IT implementation in health care organizations
•
Why are IS/IT implementation in health care so difficult to manage? How can doctors and nurses
become happy instead of frustrated users of IT?
– E-health, m-health and serious games in health
•
What is being offered to the public as on-line health information sources and tools? Does m-health
improve prevention and healthy behavior? How can we study its effectiveness?
•
How can serious games improve the training of healthcare professionals? How can it support the
management of healthcare organizations?
 Teaching
– Thesis supervision
– Seminar Medical Informatics (period 3)
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Thesis projects in/for health
care organizations
At UMCU, ICT Directorate (Utrecht):
 Research on CheckIT, an add-on of the Hospital
Information System to support clinical pathway
processes in oncology, vessel surgery and cystic
fibrosis in children
 Research on an iterative, user-centered m-health
application for lung patients, including design
conceptualization, end-user research, prototyping,
alpha and field-usability testing
 The opportunities for enterprise architecture, lean,
process optimization, IT-supported health care
pathways
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Thesis projects in/for health
care organizations
At NIVEL (Utrecht):
 The development of a serious management game for
General Practitioners in training
 Information Systems for General Practitioners: what
determines their use and added value?
 When do General Practitioners subscribe medical
apps?
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End of the individual
presentations
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Graduating as an Entrepreneur

For those students in the Entrepreneurial profile it is possible
to have a graduation project that is close to the needs of the
product or company.
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Several MBI students have graduated already in this profile
– Rick van Bommel: A maturity matrix for SEO
– Wilco van Duinkerken: Transaction Cost Economics in Software
Ecosystems
– Ivo van Soest: Business Modeling for Software Products
– Floris Vlasveld: E-business Strategy Development A Reference
Method Created by Formal Method Comparison
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Interested students should contact Slinger Jansen or Sjaak
Brinkkemper for a suitable graduation topic.
Becoming a researcher
We are very interested in assisting those who are interested in
pursuing a PhD
Qualifications:
 Having fun in doing research and writing papers
 Average grade in research related courses > 7.5 or 8
 Grade of graduation project > 8
 Independence in writing paper from thesis
For a PhD project there are several options:
 At University
– Requires project with funding
– At UU, NL university or abroad
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At company in a 20%-80% or 40%-60% work division
Those interested in pursuing a PhD should make an appointment
with Sjaak Brinkkemper
Final remarks
 The Center’s website:
www.cs.uu.nl/groups/OI
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News
MBI-Colloquium information
Education -> Graduation information
GraduateMBI@cs.uu.nl
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