Farhad Daneshgar

Investigating Knowledge Management practices in software development organisations - An Australian experience

This study, using both quantitative and qualitative methods, investigates current practice of Knowledge Management (KM) in Software Engineering (SE) processes in two Australian companies on the basis that they both claimed to apply KM practices in their software development work. It also describes the KM activities and KM process used in SE practice, and examines the enablers of KM process for SE in terms of leadership, technology, culture, process and measurement. One of the main findings showed that software developers believe in the usefulness of knowledge sharing; however, their ability to utilise some of the KM systems was limited. The most commonly used systems included personal networks, informal networks, groupware and third-party knowledge. There is a need to formalise knowledge sharing of practices, while also supporting informal and ad-hoc knowledge sharing. While KM was considered to be important, the tools, techniques and methodologies currently employed for software development were inadequate to address effective management of knowledge in these organisations. In both organisations, a uniform model of the KM process did not exist. Among the four KM enablers, leadership was considered to be the most significant as top-down KM strategies were seemingly being pursued by management. Technology was also considered to be an obvious mechanism for KM, despite some of their current KM systems either being unsuitable or inaccessible. In addition, the crucial role that personal networks played in accessing tacit and implicit knowledge was seen as a key reason to foster a culture that encourages participants to share their knowledge with others.

Identifying knowledge-sharing requirements in academic libraries

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to provide an evaluation of the existing state of practice in knowledge sharing in university libraries.Design/methodology/approach – This is survey research which is based on an electronic questionnaire.Findings – Results reveal that the majority of libraries investigated are quite friendly towards knowledge sharing, and the majority of librarians value the importance of knowledge sharing. Results also confirm that the knowledge that they mostly use is mainly intangible knowledge.Originality/value – If knowledge‐sharing requirements of librarians while collaboratively performing reference and information services can be acknowledged, guidelines for enhancing conceptual collaborative process would be suggested.

The Role of Fuzzy Awareness Modelling in Cooperative Management

Cooperative management is concerned with the management of networks and services involving the cooperation of a number of human/organizational entities. One of the prerequisites for efficient management of these complex systems is related to understanding of the roles of humans and the ways hey interact with each other. Cooperative management Methodology for Enterprise Networks (CoMEN) achieves these objectives by defining an abstract measure of cooperation called Awareness level that is based on Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) concepts and techniques. In view of the abstract nature of the awareness level definitions, it is not clear how abstract awareness levels can be accurately translated into equivalent cooperative management design parameters. This paper explores the notion of fuzzy sets that enables the use of linguistic values for awareness levels. This is aimed at unveiling of the deficiencies in the existing collaborative support tools with a view to developing more effective cooperative applications. We also model the CSCW tools in terms of repositories and communication mechanisms using fuzzy notions with a view to arrive at a formal design methodology for cooperative management systems. The idea has been illustrated with a case study in a large telecom organization.

A knowledge schema for organisational learning in academic libraries

This article introduces a formal methodology for deriving conceptual knowledge schema for todays academic libraries. This knowledge schema is defined in the form of a set of knowledge structures and their relationships, and with the purpose of identifying organisational learning requirements. These schemas will then form basis for an organisational knowledge base that assists collaborating librarians to identify appropriate links to relevant knowledge sources within the context of the tasks that they perform. The article demonstrates that the proposed schema when used in conjunction with a specialised knowledge map called the Awareness Net will constitute a suitable conceptual framework for identifying knowledge sharing and organisational learning requirements in todays university libraries.

Cloud migration process-A survey, evaluation framework, and open challenges

The relevant approaches for migrating legacy applications to the cloud are surveyed.An extensive analysis of existing approaches on the basis of a set of important criteria/features.Important cloud migration activities, techniques, and concerns that need to be properly addressed in a typical cloud migration process are delineated.Existing open issues and future research opportunities on the cloud migration research area are discussed. Moving mission-oriented enterprise software applications to cloud environments is a crucial IT task and requires a systematic approach. The foci of this paper is to provide a detailed review of extant cloud migration approaches from the perspective of the process model. To this aim, an evaluation framework is proposed and used to appraise and compare existing approaches for highlighting their features, similarities, and key differences. The survey distills the status quo and makes a rich inventory of important activities, recommendations, techniques, and concerns that are common in a typical cloud migration process in one place. This enables both academia and practitioners in the cloud computing community to get an overarching view of the process of the legacy application migration to the cloud. Furthermore, the survey identifies a number challenges that have not been yet addressed by existing approaches, developing opportunities for further research endeavours.

Validation of the awareness net model for the Australian security investment processes

This study evaluates the appropriateness of an existing collaborative business process model for representation of the collaboration context within the Australian security investment market (ASIM). It is an initial step towards developing knowledge-base system of a management support system for investment decision processes within the ASIM. The three aspects of appropriateness evaluated correspond to the three quality categories namely, syntactic, semantic and pragmatic qualities using the conceptual model quality framework (CMQF) which is based on semiotic theory. An interpretivist case study methodology is adopted using a combination of theory building and sense-making case study strategies. Seven in-depth interviews were conducted in order to assess the above three appropriateness measures by the actors within the ASIM whose roles correspond to those in the awareness model. The study highlighted required modifications to the concept descriptions of the initial version of the model. A modified awareness net was then constructed accordingly.

A study on suicidal risks in psychiatric adults

Psychiatric patients often commit suicide during illness. Although the occurrences of suicides could be prevented, yet detection of risks at the early stage of the illness is a difficult task as hardly any warning sign/symptom could be detected. This study addresses this important issue and proposes a methodology to It further argues that together these observations could be useful for early detection of suicidal risks.

E-Learning in Workplaces

In the new digital age, the ever changing economy has posed many challenges to organisations and individuals. The ability to adapt to changes has become more and more important. Lifelong learning has been introduced and emphasised in the new millennium and the potential of e-learning has been widely recognised. Many organisations and higher education institutions are adopting e-learning worldwide as a means for knowledge acquisition and sharing. This paper investigates recent developments of e-learning in workplace and higher education, both at individual and organisational levels, in order to provide guidelines for development of appropriate e-learning systems for these entities. It was found that the e-learning systems in both workplace and higher education environments possess certain common attributes. However, because these environments adopt different perspective towards e-learning as a medium for various knowledge management activities, some differences were identified and explicated. Such difference in the perspective, in turn, mandates a need for different research focus on the e-learning development.

An Integrated Customer Knowledge Management Framework for Academic Libraries

The ability of academic libraries to produce timely and effective responses to various environmental changes constitutes a major challenge for them to enhance their survival rate and maintain growth in competitive environments. This article provides a conceptual model as an analytical tool for both improving current services as well as creating innovative services through appropriate management of client knowledge in academic libraries. Through an exploratory qualitative case study and from reviewing the current literature in knowledge management, a theoretical framework is proposed for managing customer knowledge. The proposed framework is expected to improve existing library services and create new innovative services in academic libraries.

Identifying knowledge transfer requirement in global organisational contexts

This article studies the inter-organisational (IO) knowledge transfer in global supply chains. A representative case was selected that consists of a number of laboratory analysis equipment dealer companies in Thailand and their customer companies in different industries in various parts of the world. Using the theories and frameworks in knowledge transfer in inter-organisational relationships, a survey questionnaire instrument was designed and data were collected from 73 employees of dealer companies and 87 employees of their customer companies (users of the laboratory equipment) scattered in different industries worldwide. Results indicate that the intra-organisation characteristics of the dealer companies which are expected to affect transfer of the necessary knowledge to the customers has no significant relationship with the nature of knowledge that is transferred or with the inter-organisation management. Moreover, there is no statistical significance in the intra-organisation relationships within the client companies perhaps because the majority of laboratory analysis equipment dealer companies import a great part of their products from overseas companies and they do not possess the technology themselves. Based on the findings, appropriate guidelines were provided for the enhancement of the effectiveness of the knowledge transfer process within the wide case study of this research.