Mohd Zali Mohd Nor

Knowledge Sharing Interactions in Collaborative Software Maintenance Environment

In collaborative Software Maintenance (SM) environment, knowledge sharing is vital to ensure various parties have the necessary information to perform SM tasks. However, patterns of knowledge sharing interactions within the networked organization of SM Community of Practice (CoP) and factors that influence these interactions are yet to be established. We study the dialogues captured in the Software Configuration Management (SCM) tool used by a global SM organization and use Pajek, a Social Network Analysis (SNA) tool, to map the interactions among users and maintenance personnel. The results revealed technical, planning and domain information as most shared information. Network bottlenecks are also identified, which evolves around a key development manager, a development team leader and a systems analyst. Also, there are lack of direct interactions between programmers and domain knowledge providers. As such, the SM environment could benefit from process automations on selected tasks of the above bottleneck areas to ensure knowledge are shared across the board.

A framework of collaborative knowledge management system in open source software development environment.

The global economy crisis reveals the advantages of Open Source Software (OSS). Software developers benefit not only from reduced cost of acquisition, but also access to source code and components. In this aspect, knowledge sharing among developers are immensely important in all facets of System Development Life Cycle (SDLC). Feller and Fitzgerald (2000) raised the critical questions on what life-cycle underpins the OSS model and what is the best methodology to support the OSS as well as what toolkit support OSS methodology. This paper shall discuss the formulation of Knowledge Management System (KMS) framework for sharing knowledge in OSS using SDLC from the planning phase until the maintenance phase. An initial fact finding survey was conducted on selected OSS developers in Malaysia to analyze the current usage and acceptance of OSS. The results are quite unexpected, with many OSS developers are still not fully using OSS tools in SDLC stages. The proposed KMS model is envisaged to allow OSS Community-of-Practice to share the OSS knowledge for the whole SDLC.

The Challenges of Open Source Software Development with Collaborative Environment

The current practice of Open Source Software (OSS) evolves around sharing the source codes. However, without a prudent methodology in OSS software development, OSS users seldom participate in software development and prefer just to be end-users. To identify and analyze the current usage and acceptance of OSS , a survey was conducted among selected OSS developers in Malaysia. The results, analyzed using SPSS and Rasch method, are quite unexpected, with many OSS developers still not fully using OSS tools in SDLC stages. This paper shall also propose a Knowledge Management System (KMS) Framework for sharing software development using OSS to enable Community-of-Practice to share software development using OSS knowledge.

Applying Knowledge Management System Architecture in Software Maintenance Environment

Knowledge management (KM) become important for organization to take advantage on the information produced and can be brought to bear on present decision. Software maintenance (SM) is a process that requires lots of knowledge. Maintainers must know what changes should do to the software, where to do those changes and how those changes can affect other modules of the system. Knowledge management system (KMS) can support the processes of knowledge creation, storage or retrieval, transfer and application. KMS in SM could help the organization to make tacit knowledge into explicit and therefore decrease the dependency on employees’ cognition. This paper is to apply KMS architecture in SM environment to overcome the problem faced by software maintainers during the software maintenance process.

Survey on software maintenance profile and Knowledge requirement in public higher learning institutions

Software maintenance (SM) environment is highly complex, knowledge-driven and collaborative. Therefore, Knowledge management (KM) is critical to provide an environment for sharing and sustaining knowledge. Issues such as inadequate knowledge and lack on information sharing are still regarded as major challenges in SM. This paper presents the results of a survey on KM of SM process in selected higher learning institutions (HLIs) in Malaysia. Based on the survey, several deficiencies are identified as common to HLIs. Domain knowledge is important but these are seldom stored in KMS or other electronic means. Maintainers also spent considerable efforts collaborating with other parties to obtain information. Therefore, resolving these issues should be given high priority.

KMS components for collaborative software maintenance – a pilot study

Software maintenance (SM) environment is highly complex, knowledge-driven and collaborative environment. Therefore, a Knowledge Management System (KMS) is critical to ensure various parties have the necessary information to perform SM activities. In an effort to model the requirements for sharing and sustaining knowledge in SM environment, we review literatures on Knowledge Management (KM), KMS and SM frameworks to identify the knowledge components, tools and technologies. An initial model of KMS components in collaborative SM is proposed, to be verified vis-à-vis a questionnaire survey. Before the questionnaires are sent out, a pilot study was conducted to identify misfit questionnaire items so that they could be revised before being sent out. Rasch Unified Measurement Method (RUMM) is used to analyze the pilot data. Item reliability is found to be poor and a few respondents and items are identified as misfits with distorted measurements. As a result, some problematic questions are revised and some predictably easy questions are excluded from the questionnaire.

Agent-based tool to support collaborative KMS in software maintenance process environment

Software maintenance (SM) environment is highly complex, knowledge-driven and collaborative. Therefore, knowledge management system (KMS) is critical to provide an environment for sharing and sustaining knowledge among members of SM community of practice (CoP). Several KM retrieval tools are compared to identify the areas that could be improved. One of the important but least available knowledge required by maintainers is the Domain Business knowledge and the relations to the application SM process knowledge. We propose a new tool based on Multi-Agent System (MAS) to address this issue and to assist CoP members to get the right knowledge at the right time.