Organizational knowledge transfer through creation, mobilization and diffusion: A case analysis of InTouch within Schlumberger

There is a paucity of theory for the effective management of knowledge transfer within large organisations. Practitioners continue to rely upon ‘experimental’ approaches to address the problem. This research attempts to reduce the gap between theory and application, thereby improving conceptual clarity for the transfer of knowledge. The paper, through an in-depth case analysis conducted within Schlumberger, studies the adoption of an intranet-based knowledge management (KM) system (called InTouch) to support, strategically align and transfer knowledge resources. The investigation was undertaken through the adoption of a robust methodological approach (abductive strategy) incorporating the role of technology as an enabler of knowledge management application. Consequently, the study addressed the important question of translating theoretical benefits of KM into practical reality. The research formulates a set of theoretical propositions which are seen as key to the development of an effective knowledge based infrastructure. The findings identify 30 generic attributes that are essential to the creation, mobilisation and diffusion of organisational knowledge. The research makes a significant contribution to identifying a theoretical and empirically based agenda for successful intranet-based KM which will be of benefit to both the academic and practitioner communities. The paper also highlights and proposes important areas for further research

Towards guidelines for building a business case and gathering evidence of software reference architectures in industry

Background: Software reference architectures are becoming widely adopted by organizations that need to support the design and maintenance of software applications of a shared domain. For organizations that plan to adopt this architecture-centric approach, it becomes fundamental to know the return on investment and to understand how software reference architectures are designed, maintained, and used. Unfortunately, there is little evidence-based support to help organizations with these challenges. Methods: We have conducted action research in an industry-academia collaboration between the GESSI research group and everis, a multinational IT consulting firm based in Spain. Results: The results from such collaboration are being packaged in order to create guidelines that could be used in similar contexts as the one of everis. The main result of this paper is the construction of empirically-grounded guidelines that support organizations to decide on the adoption of software reference architectures and to gather evidence to improve RA-related practices. Conclusions: The created guidelines could be used by other organizations outside of our industry-academia collaboration. With this goal in mind, we describe the guidelines in detail for their use.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Software Measurement Activities in Small and Medium Enterprises: an Empirical Assessment

An empirical study for evaluating the proper implementation of measurement/metric programs in software companies in one area of Turkey is presented. The research questions are discussed and validated with the help of senior software managers (more than 15 years’ experience) and then used for interviewing a variety of medium and small scale software companies in Ankara. Observations show that there is a common reluctance/lack of interest in utilizing measurements/metrics despite the fact that they are well known in the industry. A side product of this research is that internationally recognized standards such as ISO and CMMI are pursued if they are a part of project/job requirements; without these requirements, introducing those standards to the companies remains as a long-term target to increase quality

Recovering Architectural Variability of a Family of Product Variants

A Software Product Line (SPL) aims at applying a pre-planned systematic reuse of large-grained software artifacts to increase the software productivity and reduce the development cost. The idea of SPL is to analyze the business domain of a family of products to identify the common and the variable parts between the products. However, it is common for companies to develop, in an ad-hoc manner (e.g. clone and own), a set of products that share common functionalities and differ in terms of others. Thus, many recent research contributions are proposed to re-engineer existing product variants to a SPL. Nevertheless, these contributions are mostly focused on managing the variability at the requirement level. Very few contributions address the variability at the architectural level despite its major importance. Starting from this observation, we propose, in this paper, an approach to reverse engineer the architecture of a set of product variants. Our goal is to identify the variability and dependencies among architectural-element variants at the architectural level. Our work relies on Formal Concept Analysis (FCA) to analyze the variability. To validate the proposed approach, we experimented on two families of open-source product variants; Mobile Media and Health Watcher. The results show that our approach is able to identify the architectural variability and the dependencies

Kernel arquitecture for CAD/CAM in shipbuilding enviroments

The capabilities of complex software products such as CAD/CAM systems are strongly supported by basic information technologies related with data management, visualization, communication, geometry modeling and others related with the development process. These basic information technologies are involved in a continuous evolution process, but over recent years this evolution has been dramatic. The main reason for this has been that new hardware capabilities (including graphic cards) are available at very low cost, but also a contributing factor has been the evolution of the prices of basic software. To take advantage of these new features, the existing CAD/CAM systems must undergo a complete and drastic redesign. This process is complicated but strategic for the future evolution of a system. There are several examples in the market of how a bad decision has lead to a cul-de-sac (both technically and commercially). This paper describes what the authors consider are the basic architectural components of a kernel for a CAD/CAM system oriented to shipbuilding. The proposed solution is a combination of in-house developed frameworks together with commercial products that are accepted as standard components. The proportion of in-house frameworks within this combination of products is a key factor, especially when considering CAD/CAM systems oriented to shipbuilding. General-purpose CAD/CAM systems are mainly oriented to the mechanical CAD market. For this reason several basic products exist devoted to geometry modelling in this context. But these basic products are not well suited to deal with the very specific geometry modelling requirements of a CAD/CAM system oriented to shipbuilding. The complexity of the ship model, the different model requirements through its short and changing life cycle and the many different disciplines involved in the process are reasons for this inadequacy. Apart from these basic frameworks, specific shipbuilding frameworks are also required. This second layer is built over the basic technology components mentioned above. This paper describes in detail the technological frameworks which have been used to develop the latest FORAN version.Postprint (published version

A framework and tool to manage Cloud Computing service quality

Cloud Computing has generated considerable interest in both companies specialized in Information and Communication Technology and business context in general. The Sourcing Capability Maturity Model for service (e-SCM) is a capability model for offshore outsourcing services between clients and providers that offers appropriate strategies to enhance Cloud Computing implementation. It intends to achieve the required quality of service and develop an effective working relationship between clients and providers. Moreover, quality evaluation framework is a framework to control the quality of any product and/or process. It offers a tool support that can generate software artifacts to manage any type of product and service efficiently and effectively. Thus, the aim of this paper was to make this framework and tool support available to manage Cloud Computing service quality between clients and providers by means of e-SCM.Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación TIN2013-46928-C3-3-RJunta de Andalucía TIC-578