Investigation of mashups as a possible tool for managers

Abstract

The Web technologies have spurred a lot of changes across sectors. Specially speaking, Web 2.0 has come with the distinguished changes mainly in empowering end user, from being passive participant to being active contributor. Mashups on the other hand are one of the latest growing examples of Web 2.0 concept. With mashups it is possible to collect different sources of data from the Web into one application, aggregate them and to present to user in interactive manner. There are easy in development and less in cost. This thesis studies mashups as potential tools for managers from different aspects. Firstly, a deep investigation of mashup itself is done in order to know what mashups can do for managers. The further study is dedicated to defining a justification baseline to evaluate usefulness of mashups in management in a specific area. For this, School of Graduate Studies (SPS) Admission Unit in Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM) is chosen as the case study. By using Yahoo Pipes and Open Kapow mashup editors, some mashup applications are developed and evaluated with corresponding managers. And the assessment of mashups as being tools to develop applications by managers themselves is done by asking SPS managers to develop mashup application and giving their feedback about their development process. Finally, the feedbacks from managers and the whole study are integrated to propose mashups for managers, at what extent and in what way.