Adapting Scrum Process with 7C Knowledge Management Model

In project-based organizations knowledge is a critical resource used to develop and deliver products and services with a high level of quality. Therefore, a systematic and sustainable process is necessary to coordinate knowledge management, project management and product lifecycle. This scenario predominates in companies focused on the creation and maintenance of information systems. This article presents an exploratory study based on a framework that integrates cognitive, managerial, and operational processes in a public Brazilian organization that provides services in the area of information and communications technology, focusing on the construction and maintenance of information systems. Those processes are operationalized by three management models considering knowledge, project, and software development processes. Our proposal aims to understand the relationships between those three management models and their influence on the software development process in the organization under study. Our premise is based on the principle that cognitive management, project management, and software development management must be integrated to fulfill the demands of product development and service provision. The research data was composed of registers of working hours spent on software development and maintenance projects involving 244 people allocated to 5064 projects in the period from 2007 to 2013. The study resulted in the identification of the relationships among the three management models adopted by the organization, with emphasis on knowledge management activities, which were not directly identified, making it difficult to account for and measure them. We established a set of activities connected to each one of the knowledge management model phases. Since those activities were not visible before, our approach contributed to build a systematic process to register and relate activities linked to the dimensions of cognitive processes, project management, and software construction.

Integrated knowledge management model and system for construction projects

Despite of many criticisms, agile software development (Beck et al., Manifesto for Agile Software Development, http://agilemanifesto.org, [1]) philosophy has been proved to be quite successful to increase the project success rate up to a significant extent. The primary reasons behind the criticism of agile are the strong violation of the traditional disciplined software engineering theories, principles and practices. The goal of this research paper is to establish the fact that agility may also be achieved by following traditional process models especially with BRIDGE (Mandal, 2009 IEEE International Advance Computing Conference (IACC 2009) Patiala, India, [2]) process model. Hence, the aim of this paper is to integrate the agile and traditional disciplined software development process models and establish the compatibility between both the approaches. At the beginning, we have explored the objectives and principles of agile software development. Next, we briefly discussed the BRIDGE process model and further justified that--following BRIDGE process model, the philosophy of agile may also be achieved and conclude that BRIDGE model has both the capability of traditional software development process model as well as of the agile process.

In the past decade, there have been a number of notable changes in industrial software engineering, including the movement towards agility. The Agile Manifesto characterizes the term “agile”, and lists a set of principles that form a basis for agile methodologies [1], such as Extreme Programming (XP), OpenUP, and Scrum. There is creation, communication, and consumption of knowledge during (agile) software development [2]. For the success of an agile project, it is crucial that such knowledge be managed effectively. In doing so, an appropriate selection and use of certain tools and technologies can be helpful. In the past few years, there has been a proliferation of Social Web Applications, such as Wiki [3]. Indeed, a number of noteworthy uses of Wiki in software engineering have been reported [4]. However, these studies are largely independent of any software development methodology, and are centered mostly on collaboration. The primary reasons for selecting Wiki for agile software development include the following: (1) the deployment of agile methodologies, especially XP and Scrum, with teams that are increasingly geographically-dispersed, (2) the involvement in sustainable software development by organizations with basic infrastructure and modest budgets for resources, and (3) the need of inexpensive, mature, and widely-available tools for supporting iterative development, by almost anybody, at anytime, anywhere, using almost any device. The purpose of this research is to provide a framework for integrating Wiki for the purpose of facilitating the dynamics of knowledge during agile software development.

Agile development practices have been widely adopted in a variety of organizations, yet only a few tools are available to help make the practical process of managing agile teams less painful and more successful. HP Agile Manager is a purpose-built SaaS-based Agile planning tool. HP Agile Manager provides a simpler, smarter way to manage collaborative development. Liran Tal provides a practical, concise approach to using Agile Manager in a variety of settings to better plan, conduct, and manage software releases within development teams. His step-by-step approach will show you how to plan your products features, streamline the agile sprint process, work with user stories, and track defects throughout the development process. Agile Manager can work for small startups, mid-sized teams, as well as scale up for bigger organizations as a cost-effective and flexible tool to apply agile techniques to improve your software development process. What youll learnHow to apply the concepts of agile management in software development teams to better execute and increase performance and delivery How a software release cycle works, how to manage sprints, set timelines, build a products backlog, and manage day to day team tasks How to leverage agile best practices to guide your team through effective release planning and team collaboration Understand and apply agile software delivery concepts such, estimating and prioritizing user stories. Streamlining sprints planning, execution, and retrospective How to setup, and use HP Agile Manager to effectively manage software lifecycle through agile methodology, and learn how to leverage Agile Manager's flexible workflow to meet your team requirements and processes Using Agile Manager's dashboards for real-time view into the current status of releases, and sprints to gain insights and pro-actively respond to changes, as well as tracking your team progress, work-load, and keeping an eye on tasks burn-down, or cumulative flow Who this book is for Developers, quality engineers, development team leaders and new managers will find this book to serve them well in learning and applying agile methodologies in their teams.

Knowledge hiding (KHi) is the intentional withholding of knowledge from colleagues, often caused by a lack of trust. It takes three forms: rationalized hiding, evasive hiding, and playing dumb, with the latter two fueling ongoing mistrust. To address this, organizations promote sharing both Tacit Knowledge (TK) and Explicit Knowledge (EK), to improve teamwork, problem-solving, and workplace relationships. Recent studies highlight the challenge of distinguishing general knowledge from TK and the difficulty of articulating TK, which adds to its scarcity and value. Examining the intentions and motivations behind KHi and KHo, often driven by fear, provides important insights into organizational knowledge dynamics. This study aimed to identify key factors influencing individuals' decisions to share TK or engage in KHi or KHo behaviors in the workplace. Using an 11-stage Survey Design methodology, data was collected from 285 Knowledge Management (KM) professionals across five countries over 42 days. This comprehensive approach ensured a diverse and representative sample, enhancing the validity and applicability of the findings. Results revealed that participants were aware of and engaged in KHi, KHo, and Knowledge Sharing (KS) behaviors. They recognized that TK holders made deliberate sharing decisions based on trust, sincerity, skillsets, and expertise. This insight underscores the complexity of KM in organizational settings and the need for nuanced approaches to encourage KS. The study highlighted the need for future research to include leadership influences, which significantly impact KHi and KHo behaviors. This finding emphasizes the critical role of leadership in shaping knowledge-sharing cultures within organizations and suggests that effective KM strategies must consider leadership styles and practices. By addressing these complex issues, organizations can develop more effective strategies to promote KS, reduce harmful hiding behaviors, and ultimately enhance their competitive advantage through improved KM practices. The study's findings provide a foundation for future research and practical applications in organizational KM, potentially leading to more efficient and collaborative work environments.

Agile practices have recently gained popularity among large number of companies as a mechanism for reducing cost and increasing ability to handle change in dynamic market conditions. Based on the principles of the Agile manifesto [1, 2], researchers and practitioners have proposed several software development approaches such as Extreme Programming, Scrum and Feature-Driven Development. These and other agile approaches have had significant impact on industrial software development practices. However, there is also a significant concern and perplexity about the role and importance of the issues related to a system’s software architecture, which is considered one of the most important initial design artefacts. It is argued that software architecture is an effective tool to cut development cost and time and to increase the quality of a system. Many practitioners of Agile approaches appear to view software architecture in the context of the plan-driven development paradigm [3]. For them, upfront design and evaluation of software architecture requires too much work, which may have very little value to the customers of a system. Hence, they perceive architectural work as part of high ceremony processes, which usually require large amount of documentation. We maintain that these two seemingly opposing views to software engineering can be integrated but it requires that experts from both fields work together to overcome evident challenges in bridging these two paradigms together. Indeed, software architecture researchers and practitioners appear to believe that sound architectural practices cannot be followed using Agile approaches. However, these two extreme views of Agile and architecture appear to neglect that many agile experts emphasises the importance of paying attention to good design and architecture early in the development process [4, 5]. Recently, there is growing recognition of the importance of paying more attention to architectural aspects in agile approaches [3, 6, 7]. We argue that there is a vital need for devising a research agenda for identifying and dealing with architecture-centric challenges in agile software development. Such research agenda should make it possible to guide the future research on integrating architecture-centric methods in agile approaches and give advice to the software industry on dealing with architecture related challenges. Some of the questions to stimulate discussion in the workshop are: What is the role of software architecture in Agile software development? What are the key architecture-centric challenges and potential solutions in Agile software development projects? What is the strength of the evidence that attention to architectural issues can be counterproductive in Agile development or vice versa? What are the prerequisites for integrating Architecture-Centric methods in agile development and potential implications of such integration?

With increasing competition in the software market, software companies are using new management strategies to increase their competitiveness. In recent years, with the prevalence of agile methodologies in software development, paying attention to human resources, and selecting and managing talented human resources have become inevitable. This should be achieved by adopting appropriate talent management processes. However, in software engineering, talent management has not yet been seriously considered. Due to the critical role of agile methodologies in human resources, and the authority and freedom of individuals in agile teams, the benefit of talent management in these methodologies is vital. As a starting point, this article tries to provide a concise overview of talent management in agile software development and address the ambiguities and research gaps facing software researchers in this regard. The initial results of this study show that several ambiguities such as appropriate models of talent management applicable in agile methodologies, how to use them, effective factors in talent assessment, and the relationship between talent management and the quality of teamwork are some of the most noticeable research gaps in this area.

Agile development processes such as Scrum have been successfully applied in the software industry for many years. Based on experience, industrial practitioners indicate three predominant benefits of agile development processes compared to traditional software development processes. First of all, development results better fit customers’ and other stakeholders’ needs. That is because they are intensively involved in the development process by receiving, applying and assessing functional software increments in a defined cadence throughout the development process. Secondly, agile development processes better cope with unexpected changes in the development process due to the built-in process flexibility. Lastly, development speed has significantly increased in most of the agile software development projects, resulting in a shorter time-to-market. Especially in the context of radical innovations for technical systems, manufacturing companies are striving for approaches to optimize their development processes in a similar direction. Traditional plan-oriented development approaches such as VDI 2221 or Cooper’s Stage-Gate Process turn out to be insufficiently customer oriented, too inflexible and project duration is usually too long to reach an adequate time-to-market. For that reason, a large community in academia and industrial practice is developing and implementing approaches to adapt agile software development practices for the development of technical systems. However, a current study in industrial practice reveals that out of 23 objectives, that are expected when introducing agile development processes to technical systems, the three objectives mentioned above, show the largest negative deviations from expected benefit to realized benefit. Therefore, the overall goal of this research is to address these gaps by developing an explicit methodological approach for an agile development of technical systems. It turns out, that mainly the role of prototyping and the way product specifications are handled during the development process change significantly in the course of introducing agility to development of technical systems. Agile practitioners strive to not necessarily define product specifications comprehensively upfront, as it is postulated in plan-oriented development processes. In contrast, product specifications, which are of major importance to the overall development project, are specified and validated with customers and other stakeholders in early prototypes. Therefore, prototypes are realized in a defined cadence throughout the development process to gradually specify and validate the product. However, the way product specifications are prioritized and selected in the development of technical systems has to differ substantially from the general way Scrum or other existing agile development processes propose. That is because technical systems are characterized by multiple technical interrelations, resulting in informational dependencies for the development process. For that reason, a prioritization along criteria such as customer value, development effort and risk seems too narrow in the context of technical systems. In fact, the prioritization of product specifications has to consider both, the value being generated by their realization as well as the informational dependencies towards other specifications. Furthermore, when designing a prototype, time constraints need to be particularly considered due to lead times in parts delivery and prototype production. Therefore, this paper introduces a methodology to prioritize and select technical design parameters in agile development processes. The methodology can be applied in the cyclical sprint planning that aims at defining the scope of the next prototype to be developed. As outlined above, the major paradigms of value generation, informational dependencies as well as lead-time and effort are crucial when adapting agile for technical systems and are consequently implemented in the methodology. These paradigms are operationalized to explicitly address the mentioned major objectives of agile development processes, which are currently showing are large gap between expected benefit and realized benefit in industrial practice. The methodology is applied to the real development process of an RGB laser light source for digital cinema projectors, which is summarized as a case study in the paper. Insights from this application are equally discussed as the resulting next steps in further developing and aligning the methodology to the needs of industrial practice.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to propose Knowledge4Scrum, a novel knowledge management tool for agile distributed teams. Agile software development (ASD) refers to a group of software development methodologies based on iterative development, where requirements and solutions evolve through collaboration between self-organizing cross-functional teams. The two most widely used methodologies based on the agile philosophy are scrum and extreme programming. Whichever methodology is considered, agile teams usually consist of few members and are collocated under the same roof. However, nowadays, agile practices for distributed development are gaining much momentum. The main reasons behind such practice are cheaper skilled labour, minimizing production cost, reducing time to market and increasing the quality and performance of projects. Along with the benefits obtained through globally distributed development, there are, however, many difficulties faced by various organisations. These problems are caused mostly due to distance, time and cultural differences. To meet up with the level of complexity of projects, ASD also has to keep up with many challenges, especially in cases of distributed teams. Four major challenges have been identified. First, the introduction of global software development entails a number of difficulties, especially related to knowledge sharing. For instance, lack of transparency is frequently observed within such teams, whereby a team member is totally unaware of the activities of his/her colleagues. Second, the unavailability of team members due to time zone differences adds up to the list of problems confronted by distributed teams. Third, there can be misunderstanding amongst the team member due to communication problems, especially in cases where the mother language of the team members is different. Fourth, a common issue faced by distributed teams is the loss of knowledge when an employee resigns from his/her post. Design/methodology/approach – Based on the main problems outlined above, what has been proposed is Knowledge4Scrum, a novel knowledge management tool for agile distributed teams. Knowledge4Scrum will act as a global repository for knowledge sharing in Scrum distributed teams with the possibility of creating new knowledge through data mining techniques. Valid past projects data have been collected to train and test the data mining models. The research also investigates the suitability of knowledge management in Scrum distributed teams to address the various challenges addressed above. Findings – Knowledge4Scrum supports the four knowledge management processes, namely, knowledge creation/acquisition, knowledge storage, knowledge dissemination and knowledge application. It has been found that the aforementioned tool satisfactorily addressed issues of distance, time and cultural differences that crop-up in distributed development teams. Data mining has been the main aspect for the knowledge creation and application processes, whereby new knowledge has been determined by examining and extracting patterns from existing data found in the repository. Originality/value – A major feature of the Knowledge4Scrum tool lies in the knowledge creation and application section, where a number of data mining techniques have been utilised to identify trends and patterns in past data collected. When compared to the COnstructive COst MOdel to estimate project duration, Knowledge4Scrum gives more than satisfactory results. Such functionalities will actually help managers for future project planning and in decision-making.

Fundamental of Computer Technology is a course in first year of college to enhance computer practical skill of undergraduate and provide experiment of computational thinking. There are three issues in fundamental of computer education. One is how to organize mass content of course. The second is how to combine academic education and technical practice in teaching. The last is students on various computer practical skill levels. To guarantee quality of teaching, a closed-loop architecture based on knowledge management is proposed, which can assist teacher to hold over teaching proceeding and arouse students to get knowledge. Then some data contain test scores and investigation results are provided to prove the efficiency of the closed-loop architecture. KEYWORD: Knowledge management; Knowledge map; Computer fundamental; Teaching methodology; Closed-loop; Lab teaching; Tacit knowledge International Conference on Social Science, Education Management and Sports Education (SSEMSE 2015) © 2015. The authors Published by Atlantis Press 2006 convert to tacit knowledge by systematic steps [1]. Psychology research indicated that tacit knowledge played important role in scientific innovation [2]. Tacit knowledge is acquired largely through association with other people, and requires joint or shared activities to be imparted from on to another [3].Knowledge management are Strategies and processes designed to identify, capture, structure, value, leverage, and share an organization's intellectual assets to enhance its performance and competitiveness[4]. The purpose of knowledge management is knowledge innovation [5]. It is based on two critical activities: capture and documentation of individual explicit and tacit knowledge, and its dissemination within the organization. As far as college teacher concerned, knowledge management is not only a teaching method, but also an effective tool to promote professional level. Many college teachers have no idea about knowledge management at present. Though knowing course content well, they are not good at structuring knowledge points, assessing the knowledge dimension of a course and proposing approach to capture the required knowledge quickly. Ma et al [6] discussed the importance of knowledge management for college teacher. It lists four advantages of knowledge management. First, it can help new teacher in mastering required knowledge and professional skill. Second, it would assist college to formulate training programs for teacher, reinforcing team construction. Third, teachers would clarify the relationships among the knowledge and draft appropriate teaching plan. The last is to enhance utilization of tacit knowledge and knowledge sharing in teachers. The paper is organized as follows. Section 1 introduces the situation of Fundamental of Computer Technology and the problems in teaching. Section 2 describes the conceptions of knowledge management and its potential for course promotion. Section 3 presents a closed-loop architecture based on knowledge management, and evaluates the architecture by data analysis. Section 4 concludes. 3 CLOSED-LOOP ARCHITECTURE The essence of teaching and learning is imparting and sharing activities of knowledge. In this process, students gain personal experiences. After that, new requests for knowledge are generated. New knowledge integrates to old knowledge system. At the end, personal knowledge system is updated. A successful education process should satisfy it. In practice, we design a closed-loop architecture to solve the three questions presented in section 1 by applying knowledge management to teaching deliberately. The close-loop architecture consists of three stages, illustrated in figure 1. Figure 1. Closed-loop architecture. First stage is teaching content management, aims at question 1 and question 3. Second stage is teaching process control, aims at question 2. Last stage is teaching summative evaluation, which provides basis for next teaching loop. 3.1 Teaching content management Composed of contents across various major disciplines, Fundamental of Computer Technology is a proper circumstance for knowledge management practice. Course content management emphasizes the internal relationship of knowledge. To communicate each pair of points in course content, it refers to content, identity, classify and structure knowledge. In this stage, the management is performed by teachers. It is realized in two approaches: collective course preparation of teachers and pre-course survey on students. 3.1.1 Teacher’s knowledge management Knowledge map is an effective tool for knowledge management, proposed by B. C. Brooks first. He mentioned that a person’s knowledge can formulated as a concept map in which a vertex represents a knowledge unit. Knowledge map is not only a guide to knowledge, but also is an organization's internal or external repositories or sources of knowledge [7]. The process oriented knowledge map of Fundamental of Computer Technology is represented by figure 2.

The term absorptive capacity (AC) refers to acquiring the external resources to improve innovativeness and performance inside the firm. Since its introduction in year 1990, AC has gained wide popularity for its application in the business world; nevertheless, its application still rare to be found in the vocational schools (known as polytechnics) in Indonesia. In general, the Indonesian polytechnics have lack of AC mechanism in improving their collaboration model with the firms. The article examines the important role of knowledge management (KM) model to improve the AC mechanism inside the state-owned polytechnics. The state-owned polytechnics have mission to support local and national economic corridors, and strengthening the foundation of firms. The article proposes the development of KM model based on the AC studies in the firms, and links them with the efforts in creating new product advantage (NPA).

Knowledge management (KM) is crucial for successful project completion in the construction industry, where tacit knowledge, embedded in individuals’ experiences, plays a critical role. However, capturing and transferring this knowledge across projects is challenging due to the temporary nature of construction teams and the reluctance of individuals to share their expertise. Traditional KM methods, such as interviews and videos, often fail to capture tacit knowledge due to various barriers, including organisational culture, limitations of technology, and individual factors like knowledge hoarding. This study investigates a novel approach to overcome these barriers and effectively capture tacit knowledge in construction. This study proposes a storytelling-based approach for capturing tacit knowledge within a Knowledge Management System (KMS). Participants contributed their knowledge directly through stories within the KMS, unlike previous studies that relied on interviews or videos. This method aims to address the reluctance to share tacit knowledge by empowering individuals to share their experiences in a comfortable and engaging format. The study’s validation methodology incorporates two elements: (1) extensive research was conducted on KM, storytelling, and existing methods for capturing tacit knowledge, and (2) issues concerning tacit knowledge capture were identified based on the research. This study contributes to the field of KM in construction by: (a) proposing a novel storytelling-based approach for capturing tacit knowledge, (b) addressing the limitations of traditional KM methods in construction, and (c) offering a framework for implementing storytelling-based KM within KMS. The proposed storytelling approach has the potential to overcome existing barriers and contribute to the effective capture and utilisation of tacit knowledge in construction projects. This can lead to improved project performance, reduced rework, and knowledge transfer across projects within the industry. Keywords: Tacit Knowledge, Knowledge Management

The increasing popularity of agile software development has significantly changed the way organizations plan, design, and implement software applications. However, considering the complexity involved with software development, the decision to choose an agile approach over the traditional waterfall approach is not straightforward. Organizations should carefully evaluate a variety of factors when choosing a development approach. In this teaching case study, the authors provide a discussion case to facilitate the students’ learning of using agile vs. traditional approaches in software development. This case study is developed based on experiences of multiple real-world software development projects and the literature on software development. It is designed to reflect the complexities students are likely to encounter in actual software development projects. The case can be used in undergraduate or graduate level management information systems courses that cover agile software development approaches. Students can gain an understanding of factors to consider when choosing a development approach, which tailors to the organization, the project environment, and the project team.

Offhand, the agile and the disciplined software development approaches seem contradicting. More and more, software development organizations however strive at implementing an agile software development approach while still being compliant to a quality assurance standard. Researchers are discussing the combinability and compatibility of these two approaches. Through a review of the literature, the purpose of this chapter is to determine whether the agile and the disciplined software development approaches are combinable or just compatible, in particular to identify the main challenges of using an agile software development approach in a disciplined setting. The review shows that the agile and the disciplined approaches are compatible, but not combinable. It is possible to implement agile practices and principles in a development process compliant with a quality standard, but the regulations of the standard makes it impossible to implement a full agile software development process without compromising the agility. The main challenges, when balancing the agility and discipline in a project, are how to determine the right level of documentation and how to overcome the differences in the way requirements are handled.