Knowledge Management in Software Development

Table of Contents

1.0 INTRODUCTION        

2.0 KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT IN SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT INDUSTRY        

2.1 Knowledge        

2.2 Types of knowledge.        

2.2.1 Tacit Knowledge        

2.2.2 Explicit Knowledge        

2.2.3 Advantage and Disadvantage of Tacit Knowledge        

2.2.4 Advantage and Disadvantage of Explicit Knowledge        

2.3 Knowledge Management        

2.4 Software Development        

3.0 PROBLEMS IN KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT IN SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT        

4.0 Solutions        

5.0 Conclusion        

6.0 Bibliography        

1.0 INTRODUCTION

The spectacular growth of software industry in the second half of the 20th century makes a great impact to the economic growth. According to the software industry facts and figures by Business Software Alliance, the software sector in the leading country, USA, accounts for nearly half of its global sales  (Commander, 2003) (Business Software Alliance, 2013). Many foremost industries and companies are running base on software and some are delivered as online services such as world’s largest bookseller: Amazon, largest direct marketing platform: Google, fastest growing telecom company: Skye, leading real-world retailer:  Wal-Mart and etc. In short, we can say that software industry is ruling the world business today (Andreessen, 2011).

Software industry is a knowledge-intensive industry. The most important resources for software organizations are not the buildings, servers, development tools, but the knowledge and information held by the employees.  As the software development fields mature, knowledge has become wide-ranging term within present-day organizations, making them successful (F.O. Bjørnson, 2008). “In the midst of a thoroughly gloomy labor market, the genuine desperation you see in the software talent wars is almost surreal. Almost every day, I see big companies; little companies, entrepreneurs, wannabe entrepreneurs and even venture capitalists join in the hunt. The talent hunters infest LinkedIn, troll Quora, and trawl Facebook and Google+. Cartoons of homeless-looking CEOs holding up signs that say "Looking for a technical co-founder" are doing the rounds (Venkatesh Rao, 2011). According to Journal of Management Studies, 2009, oorganizations are encouraged to strive to become knowing organizations (Choo 1998), knowledge companies (Stewart 1997; Sveiby, 1997), knowledge-based businesses (Davis and Botkin, 1994), knowledge-based organizations (Leonard-Barton, 1995), knowledge-creating companies (Nonaka and Takeuchi, 1995) or learning organizations (Senge,1994) (What Really is a Knowledge-Intensive Firm, June, 2009).