Towards a methodology to help predict and reduce impact of projects on long-term costs, corporate strategy and existing IT infrastructure

University of Technology, Sydney. Faculty of Design, Architecture and BuildingThis thesis contributes to the body of project management and systems development knowledge, by investigating the success of a project beyond the standard criteria of project budget, objectives and timelines used to judge project performance. This research has been conducted as part of the UTS “Doctor of Project Management” course, which encourages extension of the theoretical study of project management to a commercial environment - by investigating problems related to practical applications of project management. This research attempts to highlight the unforeseen and unplanned impacts created by projects which are often neglected and excluded from project evaluation and strategic alignment. The goal of this study is to find ways to increase the overall benefits to organisations achieved through projects, while minimising unplanned and unforeseen negative impacts caused by projects. To identify long-term impacts caused by projects, a case study is conducted with a real example, focusing on a large, deemed to be successfully completed project within an Australian financial organisation. The case study explores the environment, processes and events throughout project cycle and identifies various factors that influence project flow and create unforeseen impacts outside the planned project actions and outcomes. The case study analysis showed that some crucial decisions made about the project would have been different if some of those unplanned impacts were discovered earlier, for example during the discovery stage of the project. The unplanned impacts resulting from this project were manifested through extended timeline, additional costs and numerous post-project systems interdependencies. Since the original decisions about the way in which the project was implemented were largely based on financial factors, these impacts would have been highly relevant to project planning and could have changed some important decisions crucial to the conduct of the project by the organisation. The case study is representative of how projects are managed in the case study organisation. The findings from the case study are further extended trough a mini-survey of 123 professionals, who confirmed that unplanned impacts created by projects are worth considering and managing. The survey respondents indicated that projects in their organisations were mainly concentrated on short-term, often isolated business needs and had little alignment with the overall strategy and coordination with other projects and initiatives. While organisations are aware of the problem and keen to improve management of unforeseen impacts and associated post-project costs, their efforts so far are largely informal. Both the case study and survey indicated the need for a formal way of managing the post-project impacts and alignment between projects and strategy within organisations. Based on the literature review, case study and survey results, the research arrived at a set of findings and suggestions. The suggestions are articulated through an organisational strategy alignment framework, covering four management areas: strategy and senior management, business management, systems development and project management. The main focus of the recommended actions is around effective management of vendor relationship, strategic alignment and unforeseen project impacts. The recommended actions are grouped around the management areas as follows: • Strategy and Senior Management Suggestions • Vendor management strategy directions • Strategy alignment directions • Roles and responsibilities • Business Management Suggestions • Business impact analysis approach • Project success evaluation • Effective communication • Systems Development Suggestions • Technical impact analysis approach • Solutions evaluation • Business and vendor communication • Project Management Suggestions • Project planning and impact analysis • Solution evaluation • Strategy alignment • Project success evaluation • Utilisation of past experiences • Effective communication The findings and resulting suggestions of this research contribute to: • Project management theory • Project management and systems development practice • Project management, strategic and IT management practice The main focus of this research is the identification of factors that cause unforeseen impact caused by projects on the IT environment and organisations. While the study provides a number of suggestions to improve the effective management of these factors, the detailed analysis of the recommended actions is not within the scope of this study and is suggested as an area for further research

Novel Silicon n-in-p Pixel Sensors for the future ATLAS Upgrades

In view of the LHC upgrade phases towards HL-LHC the ATLAS experiment plans to upgrade the Inner Detector with an all silicon system. The n-in-p silicon technology is a promising candidate for the pixel upgrade thanks to its radiation hardness and cost effectiveness, that allow for enlarging the area instrumented with pixel detectors. We present the characterization and performance of novel n-in-p planar pixel sensors produced by CiS (Germany) connected by bump bonding to the ATLAS readout chip FE-I3. These results are obtained before and after irradiation up to a fluence of 10^16 1-MeV n_eq/cm^2, and prove the operability of this kind of sensors in the harsh radiation environment foreseen for the pixel system at HL-LHC. We also present an overview of the new pixel production, which is on-going at CiS for sensors compatible with the new ATLAS readout chip FE-I4.Comment: Preprint submitted to NIM-A Proceedings (Elba 2012

Intersubband electronic Raman scattering in narrow GaAs single quantum wells dominated by single-particle excitations

We measured resonant Raman scattering by intersubband electronic excitations in GaAs/AlAs single quantum wells (QWs) with well widths ranging from 8.5 to 18 nm. In narrow (less than 10 nm) QWs with sufficiently high electron concentrations, only single-particle excitations (SPEs) were observed in intersubband Raman scattering, which was confirmed by the well-width dependence of Raman spectra. We found characteristic variations in Raman shift and line shape for SPEs with incident photon energy in the narrow QWs.Comment: 5 pages including 4 figure

Design and standalone characterisation of a capacitively coupled HV-CMOS sensor chip for the CLIC vertex detector

The concept of capacitive coupling between sensors and readout chips is under study for the vertex detector at the proposed high-energy CLIC electron positron collider. The CLICpix Capacitively Coupled Pixel Detector (C3PD) is an active High-Voltage CMOS sensor, designed to be capacitively coupled to the CLICpix2 readout chip. The chip is implemented in a commercial $180$ nm HV-CMOS process and contains a matrix of $128\times128$ square pixels with $25$ $\mu$m pitch. First prototypes have been produced with a standard resistivity of $\sim20$ $\Omega$cm for the substrate and tested in standalone mode. The results show a rise time of $\sim20$ ns, charge gain of $190$ mV/ke$^{-}$ and $\sim40$ e$^{-}$ RMS noise for a power consumption of $4.8$ $\mu$W/pixel. The main design aspects, as well as standalone measurement results, are presented.Comment: 13 pages, 13 figures, 2 tables. Work carried out in the framework of the CLICdp collaboratio

Optical coherence tomography - a tool for high resolution non-invasive 3D-imaging of the subsurface structure of paintings

Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) is an imaging technique originally developed for high-resolution 3D imaging of the human eye. In 2004, Targowski et al. and Liang et al. first reported its application to paintings, demonstrating that it was possible to produce cross-section images noninvasively with this technique. In 2005 Liang et al. explored further applications such as imaging of underdrawing at a resolution and contrast greater than that achievable with infrared reflectography Since then the authors have been conducting a project to investigate systematically the potential of O C T as a new tool in the non-invasive examination of paintings and to design an O C T optimised for use in museums. This paper discusses recent developments in this work and presents examples of the use of O CT on paintings undergoing conservation treatment in the National Gallery, London

Optical coherence tomography for art conservation and archaeology

Optical coherence tomography (OCT) is a fast scanning Michelson interferometer originally designed for in vivo imaging of the eye. In 2004, our group along with two other groups first reported the application of OCT to art conservation and archaeology. Since that time we have been conducting a project to investigate systematically the potential of OCT as a new tool for non-invasive examinations of a wide range of museum objects and to design an OCT optimised for in situ use in museums. Here we present the latest results from this ongoing project, which include the determination of the optimum spectral windows for OCT imaging of paintings and painted objects executed using traditional techniques, and non-invasive imaging of the subsurface stratigraphy of painted layers at multiple wavelengths. OCT imaging in assisting spectral pigment identification and in measuring refractive indices of paint will also be presented to illustrate the potential of the technique

Anisotropic Quantum Corrections for 3-D Finite-Element Monte Carlo Simulations of Nanoscale Multigate Transistors

Anisotropic 2-D Schrödinger equation-based quantum corrections dependent on valley orientation are incorporated into a 3-D finite-element Monte Carlo simulation toolbox. The new toolbox is then applied to simulate nanoscale Si Siliconon-Insulator FinFETs with a gate length of 8.1 nm to study the contributions of conduction valleys to the drive current in various FinFET architectures and channel orientations. The 8.1 nm gate length FinFETs are studied for two cross sections: rectangular-like and triangular-like, and for two channel orientations: 〈100〉 and 〈110〉. We have found that quantum anisotropy effects play the strongest role in the triangular-like 〈100〉 channel device increasing the drain current by ~13% and slightly decreasing the current by 2% in the rectangular-like 〈100〉 channel device. The quantum anisotropy has a negligible effect in any device with the 〈110〉 channel orientation

Optimum spectral window for imaging of art with optical coherence tomography

Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) has been shown to have potential for important applications in the field of art conservation and archaeology due to its ability to image subsurface microstructures non-invasively. However, its depth of penetration in painted objects is limited due to the strong scattering properties of artists’ paints. VIS-NIR (400 nm – 2400 nm) reflectance spectra of a wide variety of paints made with historic artists’ pigments have been measured. The best spectral window with which to use optical coherence tomography (OCT) for the imaging of subsurface structure of paintings was found to be around 2.2 μm. The same spectral window would also be most suitable for direct infrared imaging of preparatory sketches under the paint layers. The reflectance spectra from a large sample of chemically verified pigments provide information on the spectral transparency of historic artists’ pigments/paints as well as a reference set of spectra for pigment identification. The results of the paper suggest that broadband sources at ~2 microns are highly desirable for OCT applications in art and potentially material science in general

Radiation-hard active pixel sensors for HL-LHC detector upgrades based on HV-CMOS technology

Luminosity upgrades are discussed for the LHC (HL-LHC) which would make updates to the detectors necessary, requiring in particular new, even more radiation-hard and granular, sensors for the inner detector region. A proposal for the next generation of inner detectors is based on HV-CMOS: a new family of silicon sensors based on commercial high-voltage CMOS technology, which enables the fabrication of part of the pixel electronics inside the silicon substrate itself. The main advantages of this technology with respect to the standard silicon sensor technology are: low material budget, fast charge collection time, high radiation tolerance, low cost and operation at room temperature. A traditional readout chip is still needed to receive and organize the data from the active sensor and to handle high-level functionality such as trigger management. HV-CMOS has been designed to be compatible with both pixel and strip readout. In this paper an overview of HV2FEI4, a HV-CMOS prototype in 180 nm AMS technology, will be given. Preliminary results after neutron and X-ray irradiation are shown

3-D Finite Element Monte Carlo Simulations of Scaled Si SOI FinFET With Different Cross Sections

Si SOI FinFETs with gate lengths of 12.8 nm and 10.7 nm are modelled using 3D Finite Element Monte Carlo (MC) simulations with 2D Schroedinger equation quantum corrections. These non-planar transistors are studied for two cross-sections: rectangular-like and triangular-like, and for two channel orientations: h100i and h110i. The 10.7 nm gate length rectangular-like FinFET is also simulated using the 3D Non-Equilibrium Green’s Functions (NEGF) technique and the results are compared with MC simulations. The 12.8 nm and 10.7 nm gate length rectangular-like FinFETs give larger drive currents per perimeter by about 25−27% than the triangular-like shaped but are outperformed by the triangular-like ones when normalised by channel area. The devices with a <100> channel orientation deliver a larger drive current by about 11% than their counterparts with a h110i channel when scaled to 12.8 nm and to 10.7 nm gate lengths. ID–VG characteristics at low and high drain biases obtained from the 3D NEGF simulations show a remarkable agreement with the MC results and overestimate the drain current from a gate bias of 0.5 V only due to exclusion of the interface roughness and ionized impurity scatterings