2nd EUROPEAN COMPUTING CONFERENCE (ECC’08) Malta, September 11-13, 2008 Capturing Software-Engineering Tacit Knowledge ABDULMAJID HISSEN MOHAMED Department of Computer Science Sebha University PO Box 18758, Sebha LIBYA [email protected] http://www.sebhau.edu.ly/cs/faculty.html Abstract: - Knowledge management systems are aimed to provide knowledge-intensive organisations with tools, and methods to better manage their knowledge capital. A great success is gained in the course of managing explicit knowledge in the form documented knowledge fragments. But, greater part of organisations knowledge is realised in tacit form which is volatile and hardly captured in a formal way. Managing this type of knowledge still represents one of the major challenges in knowledge management research. This paper proposes a knowledge model that caters for capturing both tacit and explicit organisational knowledge in the software-engineering domain. Key-Words: - Knowledge Management, software, tacit knowledge, knowledge reuse, software artefacts 1 Introduction management. Few attempts have been made to As a result of the emerging knowledge-based manage or at least partially capitalise tacit economy (or K-Economy), knowledge has become knowledge, but these efforts suffer limitations in the strategic resource of organizations to compete managing it adequately. Capturing tacit knowledge and survive. In line with this trend, the introduction is more complex than the management of explicit of knowledge management systems (KMS) is knowledge for multiple reasons. For example, tacit receiving greater attention. KMS aims at providing knowledge is highly personal and organisations have an organization the ability to benefit from its past no control on its sharing and exploitation. Also there experience in order to respond more effectively in are many psychological as well as technical barriers present situations. Organizational knowledge could that work against capturing the full richness of tacit be distinguished as formal (explicit) and informal knowledge. (tacit) knowledge. According to Conklin [4], Formal The rest of the paper is organised as knowledge is the stuff of books, manuals, documents, follows: first, the importance of capturing tacit memos, white papers, plans and training courses, knowledge is highlighted. Second, an overview of whereas informal knowledge is the knowledge that is technical and non technical challenges of capturing created and used in the process of creating the tacit knowledge is discussed. Third, the conceptual formal results. It includes ideas, facts, assumptions, framework and components of the proposed model questions, guesses, stories, points of view, etc. is explained. The paper ends with a conclusion and Notice that these forms of tacit knowledge are suggestion for further work. personal and only reside in experts’ heads. In short, it constitutes what Koskinen [8] describes as the practical know-how. 2. The importance of tacit knowledge Traditional KMS has mostly focused on the Experience is an indispensable resource for any collection and dissemination of explicit (formal) organization to perform better in handling upcoming knowledge, which is structured and stored in similar situations. Unfortunately organizations do electronic knowledge repositories. But, there is a not control all knowledge assets they have. Great growing recognition that tacit knowledge constitutes portion of organizational knowledge is realized in an essential part of the organisational memory, and tacit form which usually resides in workers’ heads it has to be considered as well. According to Zack as personal belief (know-how). Unfortunately when [15], explicating tacit knowledge so it can be a human expert becomes unavailable either efficiently and meaningfully shared and reapplied, temporarily or permanently, then his/her expertise especially outside the originating community, is one becomes unavailable too. In many situations of the least understood aspects of knowledge knowledge workers who have been ousted for ISSN:1790-5109 132 ISBN: 978-960-474-002-4 2nd EUROPEAN COMPUTING CONFERENCE (ECC’08) Malta, September 11-13, 2008 various reasons, are called back for consultation. status, laziness or controversial ideas” [1]. All these This situation simply occurs because part of the problems have its roots in human psychological organisation’s knowledge is taken away and it has to behaviour. Therefore, we believe that the be retained. In a worst scenario, the knowledge externalisation of tacit knowledge has to be carried expert might move to one of the business out as part of a defined knowledge lifecycle. It competitors, which means partially disarming should not be left as merely voluntarily act. For knowledge of the former employer. This is why in example, in software engineering, deliberations held organizations where workers turnover is high such in different reviews of software projects lifecycle as software engineering, the codification of tacit including the post-mortem reviews have to be knowledge becomes an extremely important issue. formally captured. Unfortunately, the importance of The importance of managing tacit knowledge is well the integration between software process models and expressed in the following quote by Cummings [3], knowledge lifecycle has probably not yet been “An organization’s knowledge walks out of the door sufficiently understood. every night – and it might never come back”. Unfortunately, recent huge investment in IT is focused more on the management of explicit 3.2 Technical Obstacles knowledge with less emphasis on the part of tacit In addition to non technical obstacles that contribute knowledge management. Johannessen et al [6] to difficulties in recognising and capturing tacit asserts that companies easily lose their competitive knowledge, tacit knowledge is usually less edge if they emphasis investment in, and use of IT structured and it does not conform to a standard without taking tacit knowledge into consideration. format. Therefore, it can be hardly coded and captured using traditional data models. From the software engineering viewpoint, design rationale 3 Barriers to capturing tacit models such as DRL [9], QOC [11] and IBIS [13] knowledge are all aimed to codify tacit knowledge in the form of different alternatives and justifications behind 3.1 Non-Technical obstacles developers’ design decisions. In spite of the support Knowledge management is not a technology of capturing tacit knowledge as facilitated by these problem [14, 10]. Since it involves the models, they cannot accommodate the full richness externalisation of human expertise, human factors of tacit knowledge. Sometimes, people are expected highly influence the success of any KMS. These to articulate their tacit knowledge differently; they non-technical factors are mostly related to firstly, might even resort to the use of body language. There how to characterise human knowledge, and is no one model that can accommodate all these secondly, how to promote knowledge workers to variations in expressing tacit knowledge. Another proactively contribute to externalise their tacit major limitation shared by all of these models is knowledge in order to build a group memory that, they are not coupled well with explicit system. Usually there is a tendency that knowledge knowledge in the form of knowledge embedded workers are very reluctant to share their personal artefacts. We believe knowledge artefacts should be knowledge with others. Some workers regard their regarded as incubators of tacit knowledge. professional knowledge as a source of job security The widespread use of the Internet made and they are often reluctant to share it. Other email systems an easy way to capture tacit organisational practices might also contribute to knowledge. This approach can be exemplified by workers reluctance to share knowledge. According TeamInfo[2]. But, this approach still has limitations to Kokkoniemi [7], in organisations where staff can in the form of the lack of face to face interactions be rewarded for having particular expertise, this where richer tacit knowledge is likely to surface. might lead to staff do not want to share what they Another major problem of email-based approaches know. In addition, psychological problems might lies in the fact that, the captured knowledge (in the also influence the position of knowledge workers form of email messages) is not sufficiently participation in KM settings. For example, in accessible by computational means because they do meetings where the tacit knowledge usually not conform to a standard knowledge model (i.e. produced and reproduced, some workers hesitate to free text). Therefore, we believe there is a need for share their knowledge and this would adversely knowledge models that provide decent influence the effectiveness of meetings as a result. characterisation of tacit knowledge and to integrate Becker [1] justifies this attitude by, “reluctance of both tacit and explicit knowledge fragments. The some members to speak, due to their shyness, low target models also have to cater for managing the ISSN:1790-5109 133 ISBN: 978-960-474-002-4 2nd EUROPEAN COMPUTING CONFERENCE (ECC’08) Malta, September 11-13, 2008 uptodatedness of captured knowledge based on a repository. K-Assets represent the smallest level of defined lifecycle. These requirements we believe granularity of the knowledge repository. From the will have potential to make our model workable. perspective of the software engineering domain,