Collaborative methods for business process discovery

Information flows across the organization are complex and procedures employed to understand, share and control organizational knowledge and experiences should be properly supported by collaborative environments. Nevertheless, few collaborative methodologies had been proposed to describe and evolve business processes. Existing tools don't provide the right methods for business processes discovery, modelling, monitoring and improvement. In the future, business processes models should be the result of cross-team and cross-departmental collaboration, with involved business people sharing their personal knowledge and formalizing it. This discussion paper focuses on collaborative process discovery methods, tools and the importance to integrate local information into coherent and sound process definitions. Business Alignment Methodology is a methodology that provides guidance about how organizational practices and knowledge are gathered to contribute for business process improvement against current Business Process Modelling approaches

Knowledge transfer, Learning and Organizational Capabilities in an inter-organizational software project

The aim of this work is to describe how learning and knowledge transfer mechanisms based on knowledge articulation and codification contribute to the development of organizational capabilities in software. The study focuses on client-specific and process capabilities. Results were obtained through a case study involving two partner companies in an inter-organizational project to develop an integrated information management and technology system. Evidence revealed investment and organizational efforts focused on knowledge articulation practices and activities to develop client-specific capabilities, as well as knowledge codification practices and activities to develop process capabilities. We also identified three factors that influenced software professionals’ choice of the respective mechanisms (knowledge articulation and codification) namely: the sharing context, absorptive capacity and task complexity

Modelo para análise da influência do capital intelectual sobre a performance dos projetos de software

Tese (doutorado) - Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Centro Tecnológico. Programa de Pós-Graduação em Engenharia e Gestão do ConhecimentoEsta tese propõe um modelo para analisar a influência do capital intelectual sobre a performance dos projetos de software. A maior parte do software desenvolvido profissionalmente é concebida pela execução de projetos - empreendimentos temporários que visam produzir software e documentação de acordo com as especificações dos clientes. Desta forma, o sucesso de uma organização de software é altamente dependente da performance dos projetos que executa. Torna-se crucial, então, o reconhecimento dos fatores que influenciam a performance dos projetos, possibilitando aos gestores reforçar os elementos que impulsionam os resultados atingidos e mitigar os elementos negativos. Entre os fatores possíveis, esta tese foca nos insumos baseados em conhecimento que são aplicados na execução dos projetos, recorrendo ao arcabouço teórico do capital intelectual para descrever a estrutura e o conteúdo desses recursos. Um modelo teórico é desenvolvido para descrever os elementos do capital intelectual - capital humano, capital estrutural e capital relacional - e a performance dos projetos. O questionário gerado a partir do modelo teórico é aplicado no levantamento de dados sobre projetos realizados por empresas de software da Grande Florianópolis, um polo tecnológico com importância reconhecida nacional e internacionalmente. A análise dos dados coletados é realizada a partir de um modelo de equações estruturais de mínimos quadrados parciais (PLS-SEM), que permite a validação do modelo de mensuração e a verificação das hipóteses formuladas no modelo teórico. Os resultados do modelo estatístico revelam que os três elementos do capital intelectual exercem influências positivas e significativas sobre a performance dos projetos, sendo mais determinantes o capital humano e o capital estrutural. Constata-se ainda que o nível de capital humano é positiva e significativamente correlacionado com os níveis de capital estrutural e de capital relacional aplicados aos projetos. Esses resultados confirmam a teoria de que o capital intelectual gera valor para as organizações quando seus três elementos interagem e se desenvolvem mutuamente

Knowledge management in learning software SMMEs in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa.

Doctor of Philosophy in Information Studies. University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2017.The study investigated the nature and causes of software development failures and knowledge management practices adopted to mitigate the failures in small, micro, and medium software developing enterprises (SMMEs) in the province of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. The study adopted an interpretive, qualitative multiple case study approach to investigate the problem. Twelve software development SMMEs were involved in the study. Interviews were conducted with 12 information technology (IT)/software development project managers and eight software developers identified through purposive sampling. Qualitative content analysis was used to analyse and interpret the data. The findings reveal that software development SMMEs in the province of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, experience software development failures. Ten causes of failure were identified. They are bureaucracy in IT departments, compatibility issues, complacency of developers, involvement of the wrong people in the planning stages of projects, a lack of detailed documentation, lack of resources, lack of user commitment/non-adoption of systems, miscommunication/misrepresentation of requirements, unrealistic customer expectations, and work overload. The results also indicate that software organisations and individual software developers experience knowledge gaps during the course of their work. Six knowledge management practices are adopted by the organisations and the individual developers to fill the knowledge gaps. The practices are knowledge acquisition, creation, storage, sharing, organisation and application. These practices are supported by Internet technologies such as blogs, Wikis, search engines, social networks, organisational databases and computer hardware such as servers and personal computers. The study reveals two important knowledge management practices that are ignored by software organisations, namely post-mortem reviews, which are essential in software development, and formal training of the developers. The findings further reveal that knowledge management has enabled the organisations and individual developers to save time, retain their intellectual property (IP), become more efficient and effective in knowledge reuse. Organisations face a number of knowledge management related challenges. The challenges are lack of formal knowledge management procedures, difficulty protecting knowledge, expensive knowledge storage costs, increasing information needs, lack of the time to fully adopt knowledge management practices, difficulty finding information, and the ever-changing nature of knowledge. The study concluded that software development failures are prevalent in software SMMEs and that the organisations have informally adopted knowledge management. Moreover, knowledge management has brought benefits to the organisations but the role played by knowledge management in eliminating project failures is not clear. It is recommended that software organisations should consider formally adopting knowledge management so that knowledge management specialists can be employed to drive the knowledge management initiatives and so help in conducting post-mortem reviews and the training of staff. In addition, further research is recommended to investigate the role of knowledge management in reducing or eliminating software project failures. Quantitative studies are also recommended to objectively measure the benefits brought by knowledge management. Such studies would measure how much time and which costs are saved by adopting knowledge management. The study contributes to theory and practice (software development industry). Theoretically, the study developed and used a conceptual framework developed from software engineering and knowledge management that could be used to investigate knowledge management activities in organisations. The study also contributes to the existing body of knowledge on the subject software learning organisations from a developing country perspective. It is envisaged that software development organisations will adopt the recommendations proffered to improve their knowledge management practices

Abstract Knowledge Management for Building Learning Software Organizations

Due to the steadily increasing demands of the market, strategic management of knowledge assets, or Learning Organizations, are becoming a must in industrial software development. This paper presents work done at Fraunhofer IESE, where learning organizations for software development organizations are being developed and transferred into industrial practice. It describes how learning organizations for the software domain can be built upon both mature approaches from Software Engi-neering like the Experience Factory Model and industrial strength technology from knowledge management. A system to support the Learning Software Organization is sketched and experiences regarding the implementation of this system and learning software organizations in general are presented