Knowledge Management and Computer Support for it By: Jones Olaiya Ogunduyilemi Supervisor: Yvonne Dittrich © May 2006

Agenda Knowledge and knowledge management Knowledge and its Management in Software Engineering Model for capturing & managing knowledge Strategies Analysis of Knowledge management system and tools Corrections & Conclusion

Motivation Organization seek to hire experts to resolve complex cases & enhance productivity Better offer from competitors seeking for experts, entice them and hire them Organisation failed to capture the know-how from experts and thence need to hire another expert to fill in the gap The cycle continues.....

Knowledge Resides in people, held by a person When it comes to knowledge workers, we pretty much hire smart people and leave them alone. No quality measurements, no Six Sigma, no reengineering. We haven't formally examined the flow of work, we have no benchmarks, and there is no accountability for the cost and time these activities consume (Davenport, 2003) Knowledge is contained in people’s head as an organized or contextualised “body of information”

Knowledge and Knowledge management Explicit Knowledge (codified) Tacit Knowledge (implicit) Management: the process of identifying and mapping intellectual knowledge defining means for making vast amount of corporate information accessible, sharing of best practices, and technology that enables business activity.

Knowledge and its Management in Software Engineering Processes Analysis (Efimova 2004): Organization of personal information; negotiating meaning through social activities; creating new ideas; establishing and maintaining personal networks; collaborating in communities finding codified information.

Knowledge Conversion and sharing Socialization (Tacit – Tacit) Externalization (Tacit – Explicit) Combination (Explicit – Explicit) Internalization (Explicit – Tacit) (Modes of knowledge conversion by: Nonaka & Takeuchi 1995 p. 62)

Model for capturing & managing knowledge Awareness, Identify and Capture Knowledge Set Goals for the use the Knowledge Define method to manage, share Knowledge Apply infrastructures for Knowledge Brainstorming Benchmarking Workshop Interactive mean Peer interaction community of practice Differentiation Tacit or Explicit Taking initiative Processes Methodologies Strategic Implementation Tools for sharing Maintenance Availability Figure 4: Diagram depicting the systematic approach for capturing, maintaining and using knowledge STEP 1 STEP 2 STEP 3 STEP 4 Define Goals and means of achieving the goals Mapping out strategies Determine relevance Process for differentiation Adopt Tools A P P L I C A I O N

Model overview Goals for which knowledge is required Create awareness, mapping out strategies for identifying and capturing required knowledge (get people involved) Process differentiation (is it codified or still tacit?) How do we make it feasible? How relevant is the knowledge discovered to the existing project, how could it be used for future project? Define appropriate management tools Make it accessible, available Process refactorization and enhancement

Knowledge Management Strategies Codification A codification strategy seeks to standardize an organization’s knowledge Is about capturing knowledge through documentation, getting the documents loaded into repositories and ensuring access for use but not for re-invention This strategy facilitates easy access to explicit knowledge. Personalization A personalization strategy seeks to maximize the interaction between individuals and generate innovative solutions to new problems. Is about one-on-one conversations, brainstorming sessions and thinking outside the box It requires connecting people rather than storing information. This strategy facilitates easy access to tacit knowledge.

Tools for Capturing and Managing Knowledge Key issues to be addressed: Capture knowledge Make it accessible disseminating it for shared use, and preserving it for re-use

Management tools Collaboration Tools: maintain reliable channel for collaboration and communication amongst themselves in tacit – tacit dimension The Experience Factory: enhances organization learning. It has components that address capturing, storing, distributing, applying, and creating new experience. Competence Management aid to discover who knows what; used to track who has this tacit knowledge Expert Networks based on peer-to-peer expert to expert support provide a forum for people who can provide help and establish knowledge-sharing focused on solving a problem. Knowledge Portals pull information together from different sources and display it in a coherent way, performing an explicit-to-explicit knowledge conversion.

Correction & Conclusion Page: 13 : 4.2.2, therefore it is applied when knowledge has been explicated. Page 18: 5.3.6, this is one of the most popular Conclusion The argument is that Knowledge management sometimes treats knowledge as a commodity and grows when it is shared. But in most cases, when it is not captured, it is also treated as individuals' commodity specifically owned by individuals.