While the literature provides some advice on managing programmes and projects in general, the specific context of the university–industry collaboration is being scarcely reported, demanding a strong research effort to produce effective guidelines. Pursuing this effort, a Programme and Project Management Office (PgPMO) structure, specifically devoted to support collaborative university–industry R&D funded contracts, is proposed. This paper is focused on the set of key functions and responsibilities established for the overall PgPMO, as well as on the equivalent ones for the four proposed PgPMO roles: the PgPMO Officer, PgPMO Finance, PgPMO Communication and PgPMO Quality Assurance Management. Additionally, it discusses the implementation process of such structure, shedding light on the success factors for its implementation. The PgPMO described in this paper has been implemented in two case studies. The programme stakeholders of both case studies perceived that such PgPMO structure has contributed to achieve the success of the corresponding university–industry programmes.

This paper presents a new program and project management (PPM) approach especially devoted to support collaborative university-industry R&D funded contracts. While the literature provides some advice on how to embark on designing such PPM approach, university-industry collaboration contexts require specific guidance. The research described in this paper aims to make some contribution to theory as well as to practice by discussing the PPM approach adoption in a case study collaborative university-industry R&D funded contract between the University of Minho and Bosch Car Multimedia Portugal S.A., named – HMIExcel. The results show that emphasis should be given to structured objective setting, good progress monitoring and effective communication. The research study is ongoing through the use of a questionnaire and focus groups, in order to improve the presented PPM approach conceptualization

The main aim of this paper is to present how to transform user requirements models into a software architecture for mobile applications. The technique (called "4SRS") is essentially based on the mapping of UML use case diagrams into UML object diagrams. UML sequence, activity, and state diagrams and other artifacts can also be considered within the transformation decisions. The applicability of this technique is illustrated by presenting some results from an e-government mobile application. The development of mobile applications typically follow a service-oriented approach. A service is a software entity running on one or more machines and providing a particular type of function to a priori unknown clients. These services must communicate with each other, whose combination makes up a service-oriented architecture. The communication can involve either simple data passing or it could involve two or more services coordinating some activity. Some means of connecting services to each other is needed, so workflow is a critical part of making services effective. When those services react to changes on user context, application are context-aware. For mobile applications, the definition of the underlying service-oriented software architecture must consider the services themselves as user requirements, as well as the mobile operators entry-points and the final clients interfaces, and use them to characterize the platform.

Business process modeling and management approaches are increasingly used and disclosed between organizations as a means of optimizing and streamlining the business activities. Among the various existing modeling languages, we stress the Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN), currently in version 2.0. BPMN is a widespread OMG standard that is actually used either in academia and in organizations. BPMN enables business process modeling, but does not facilitate the modeling of the information infrastructure involved in the process. However, interest in the data and its preservation has increased in BPMN's most recent version. The aim of this paper is to study BPMN 2.0, particularly on the usage and persistence of data, and present an approach for obtaining an early data model from the business process modeling, which may then be used as a starting data model in the software development process.