A Novel Model for Aligning Knowledge Management Activities within the Process of Developing Quality Software

Abstract

Background: Currently, the organization's competitive advantage is based on critical decisions to achieve their objectives by understanding the power of knowledge as a source within the organizations. However, there is a lack of qualitative models/frameworks for integrating Knowledge Life Cycle (KLC) within software development life cycle SDLC. Therefore, the goal of this research is to involve Knowledge Management activities within the SDLC in Information Technology companies to produce quality software. With the help of knowledge movements within the companies, the quality of provided software is used to improve organizations performance and products better and faster. Methods: This research highlights the importance of Knowledge Management activities during a typical software development process to provide the software as a final product/target. Moreover, the paper proposes a model to explain the relationships between knowledge management activities within the process of software development life cycle to produce quality software using three basic building blocks: people, organizations, and technologies. The success factors for the blocks are selected depending on the most recent literature occurrences and on their fitness to the nature of this study. Results: The research proposes a novel model for the success factors to evaluate the effects of the building blocks, and workflows during the software development processes. The selected success factors for the blocks are (Training, Leadership, Teamwork, Trust, IT Infrastructure, Culture, and strategies). Also, the research demonstrates the relationships between KM success factors and SDLC to produce quality software. Conclusion: In this research, we proposed a novel model to explain the relationships between knowledge management activities within the process of software development life cycle to produce quality software using three basic building blocks: people, organizations, and technologies. We selected seven success factors for the blocks depending on: 1) their importance and occurrence in a number of literature by many authors; and 2) their fitness to the nature of this study. The success factors (Training, Leadership, Teamwork, Trust, IT Infrastructure, Culture, and strategies) of the proposed model can be used to evaluate the effects of people, organizations, technologies, and workflows during the software development processes to obtain the required software quality. Finally, a quantitative study will be implemented to investigate the proposed hypothesis and to measure factors influencing the suggested model. By assessing to which degree these factors are present/ absent within the SDLC process the managers will be able to address the weakness by preparing a suitable plan and produce quality software.