Software companies are under pressure from customers to deliver solutions faster, cheaper, and with higher quality. As software development is a very knowledge intensive task, both researchers and industry have recently turned their attention to knowledge management as a means to improve software development. This often involves developing technical tools. But the tools are often not used in practise by developers and managers in the companies, and it is often unknown if the tools improve how knowledge is managed.
In order to build efficient knowledge management tools, we need a better understanding of how the tools that exist are applied and used in software development.
This doctoral thesis examines how software consulting companies use Intranet tools to share knowledge across project - to improve software development.
The thesis contains depth studies of how two organisations work with knowledge management, and explains how knowledge management tools are used in different ways, and with different frequencies. The usage varies after what work tasks employees have, and also after their personal taste.
Keywords: Knowledge Management, Software Engineering, Software Process Improvement, Learning Software Organization, Intranet Knowledge Management Tool, Personalization, Codification, Medium-Sized Software Consulting Company, Action Research, Ethnography, Grounded Theory, Case Study, PhD Thesis.
Knowledge Management in Medium-Sized Software Consulting Companies
Doktor Ingeniør thesis by Torgeir Dingsøyr
ISBN 82-7477-107-9
206 pages
Available from
Unipub Publisher, Oslo, Norway.
Price: 278 NOK (Approximately 36 USD / 37 EUR).