A Vertical Approach to Knowledge Management: Codification and Personalization in Software Processes

Software process improvement is a practical concern in software companies today and it has been addressed in research. Part of this research has applied a knowledge management perspective. Researchers point out that two different strategies exist where a mixture is difficult to maintain: Personalization (focus on people and their collaboration) and codification (focus on documents and their accessibility). This paper addresses different knowledge management problems of a software company and how they can be alleviated. A prototype, which distinguishes between different organizational levels (e.g., software managers and software developers) and applies different knowledge management strategies, was built. It consists of a wiki and an enterprise system. This article shows how each part of the system focuses on one of the strategies and describes the differences for tool support. This combination could be beneficial because the connection between the two different parts of the prototype works. Further implications for practitioners are explained.