An experience management system for a software engineering research organization

Most businesses rely on the fact that their employees possess relevant knowledge and that they can apply it to the task at hand. The problem is that this knowledge is not owned by the organization. It is owned and controlled by its employees. Maintaining an appropriate level of knowledge in the organization is a very important issue. It is, however, not an easy task for most organizations, and it is particularly problematic for software organizations, which are human- and knowledge-intensive. Knowledge management is a relatively new area that has attempted to address these problems. This paper introduces an approach called the "knowledge dust-to-pearls" approach. This approach addresses some of the issues with knowledge management by providing low-barrier mechanisms to "jump start" the experience base. This approach allows the experience base to become more useful more quickly than traditional approaches. This paper describes the approach and gives an example of its use at the Fraunhofer Center for Experimental Software Engineering, Maryland, USA.