Managing Software Engineers and Their Knowledge

Abstract

This chapter begins by reviewing the history of software engineering as a profession, especially the so-called "software crisis" and responses to it, to help focus on what it is that software engineers do. This leads into a discussion of the areas in software engineering that are problematic, as a basis for considering the knowledge management issues. Some of the previous work on knowledge management in software engineering is then examined, much of it not actually going under a "knowledge management" title, but rather "learning" or "expertise". The chapter goes on to consider the potential for knowledge management in software engineering, and the different types of knowledge management solutions and strategies that might be adopted, and touches on the crucial importance of cultural issues. It concludes with a list of challenges that knowledge management in software engineering needs to address.

Knowledge management in software engineering: A systematic review of studied concepts, findings and research methods used

“…However, Edwards notes in an overview chapter in the book on Managing Software Engineering Knowledge [45] that knowledge management in software engineering is somewhat distanced from mainstream knowledge management.…”

A Roadmap for Requirements Elicitation of Knowledge Management Systems: A Delphi Study

“…The engineering metaphor is used to emphasize a systematic approach to develop systems that satisfy organizational requirements and constraints. Since SE is a typical knowledge-intensive discipline that evolves very fast and involves a large number of people, different phases and different activities (Rus & Lindvall, 2002), it is one of the disciplines that can benefits most from KM (Edwards, 2003). Does this mean that KMS follows SE principles?…”

Effectively utilizing project, product and process knowledge

“…There are some publications that deal with this subject and show how to bring knowledge and experiences into software organizations [4,5,[8][9][10][11][12][13]21,22,27]. Though they provide concrete examples, they mostly deal with handling only a single dimension of software engineering knowledge.…”

“…For instance, how to reuse experiences from dealing with nonfunctional requirements is very pragmatically described in [9]. Most references, however, are still more on the theoretic side than answering practical questions from day-today project business [4,8,10,11,14,21]. Applicability and actual application in industry-scale application development and solutions integration are not always evident in many of the above-mentioned research papers.…”