Utilising Knowledge Management in Software Process Improvement - The Creation of a Knowledge Management Process Model

Today's software tends to become more complex and is under competitive pressure, thus raising the need for new development practices. Strong geographical and organisational distribution in a Virtual Software Corporation seem to be a solution to many aspects, but leads to new problems as well. Software development is a knowledge intensive task. Geographical distribution makes effective knowledge mediation difficult, thus demanding well-designed Knowledge Management. The processes in software development have been widely studied and appropriate means of structuring and managing them are available, i.e. detailed process models. For the area of Knowledge Management such means are missing. We will introduce the Knowledge Management Process Model that we are developing as a means of properly integrating Knowledge Management with business processes. As a demonstration, we will deploy the model to a Virtual Software Corporation. We will describe initial and ongoing validation, identify areas for further research and draw conclusions from the work done so far.