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Abstract: Software development is a knowledge intensive task. Software developers have to apply their knowledge to successfully develop quality software. To improve their software development processes and the quality of software products, software organisations are adopting knowledge management (KM). This is because KM has improved efficiency in software development. Software developers play a crucial role in the software development process, therefore we assume that their adoption of KM is crucial to the whole process. However, little research has been done to investigate software developers', KM practices, and the benefits of such practices in the software development process. This study investigated software developers' knowledge management practices and their benefits. Specifically, the following questions were asked: 1) what KM practices have been adopted by software developers? 2) How have these practices benefited software developers in their daily software development tasks? The knowledge transfer, storage, application, creation, and acquisition (K-TSACA) framework was used to inform the study. 15 software developers from 15 small, medium and micro enterprises (SMMEs) software development organisations in South Africa were interviewed. Content analysis was used to analyse the data.
The results indicate that the processes of the K-TSACA framework are adopted by software developers. All but one of the developers indicated that KM has benefited them by improving the delivery time, their efficiency and their development skills. The study concluded that software developers have adopted KM, and that KM has enabled them to be faster and more efficient in their work.
Keywords: knowledge management, software development, software developers, software development organisations, software engineering, South Africa
1. Introduction
Knowledge management (KM) has gained popularity over the years. Grant (2015) considers that KM has passed the 'fad' state and has retained the interest of both academics and practitioners. The popularity of KM has been noticed by the software engineering (SE) field, and has thus adopted it, and it has started reaping the benefits of KM (Chandani, Neeraja, & Sreedevi, 2007; Bjornson & Dingsoyr, 2008). Shongwe (2016a) found four main areas of KM studies in SE: KM in software organisations, KM in the software development process, KM in mitigating risk and KM to foster learning. KM in organisations focuses mainly on organisation-wide KM practices. This study focuses on KM in an organisational context, but specifically...