Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Intellectual ...

A Knowledge Management System to Manage Knowledge
in a Collaborative S<strong>of</strong>tware Maintenance Environment
Mohd Zali Mohd Nor, Rusli Abdullah, Masrah Azrifah Azmi Murad and Mohd
Hasan Selamat
Universiti Putra Malaysia, Serdang, Malaysia
mohd_zali@my-newstar.com
rusli@fsktm.upm.edu.my
masrah@fsktm.upm.edu.my
hasan@fsktm.upm.edu.my
Abstract: S<strong>of</strong>tware Maintenance (SM) environment is highly collaborative, complex, knowledge-driven and
important. Organizations depend on how quickly, reliably and cost-effective <strong>the</strong> s<strong>of</strong>tware could be changed to
meet business demands. Issue such as problem identifying knowledge resources is still regarded as a major
challenge. A Knowledge Management System (KMS) provides a tool that “enables <strong>the</strong> creation, communication,
and application <strong>of</strong> knowledge”. In a collaborative environment within SM Community <strong>of</strong> Practice (CoP), users and
s<strong>of</strong>tware maintainers interact on regular basis to resolve s<strong>of</strong>tware bugs and new enhancements. Based on our
established and validated KMS framework for collaborative SM, a prototype application was developed, with
emphasizes on <strong>the</strong> domain knowledge, collaborative aspects and SM activities. Named S<strong>of</strong>tware Maintenance
Collaborative Agent Team (SmCAT), <strong>the</strong> prototype uses Multi-Agent System (MAS) technology to automate <strong>the</strong>
information storing and sharing during SM processes. Prome<strong>the</strong>us methodology was used to design <strong>the</strong> MAS.
With SmCAT supporting helpdesk, maintenance request planning and development, version management and
domain knowledge repository, users and maintainers shall benefit from systematic organization <strong>of</strong> knowledge,
automation and integration <strong>of</strong> modules to support maintenance processes. To evaluate <strong>the</strong> success <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> above
tool, SmCAT was implemented, for trial, in an in-house SM department and benchmarked against ano<strong>the</strong>r similar
agent-based KMS tool developed by Rodriguez et al. 15 users and maintainers took part in <strong>the</strong> evaluation. A
questionnaire survey (based on Wu and Wang KMS Success Model) was conducted to gauge <strong>the</strong> success <strong>of</strong>
both KMS tools, which covers system quality, knowledge or information quality, context and linkage quality, user
satisfaction, perceived KMS benefits and system use. Rasch analysis was used to analyze <strong>the</strong> questionnaire
data. Based on t-test comparison on overall Rasch estimated measures, SmCAT KMS is only slightly better than
Rodriguez KMS. However, based on Common Person Equating (CPE) plot, Rodriguez KMS is significantly better
than SmCAT in several important aspects such Content Representation Logical and Fit, Provide Contextual
Knowledge and Decision Making. In future, SmCAT could be enhanced to improve <strong>the</strong>se areas.
Keywords: knowledge management system, s<strong>of</strong>tware maintenance, multi-agent system
1. Introduction
S<strong>of</strong>tware Maintenance (SM) involves complex, knowledge-intensive activities (Rodriguez et al., 2004)
and depends largely on expertise <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> maintainers. Managing knowledge in this area is <strong>the</strong>refore
critical to ensure that maintainers can perform SM activities properly and timely, by sharing and
obtaining vital knowledge. However, <strong>the</strong>re are several major problems which hamper effective
knowledge sharing. It is still <strong>of</strong>ten heard complaints that <strong>the</strong> process from bug report to getting <strong>the</strong>
corrected system is slow due to complexity and time taken collaborating to obtain information, sharing
information, and internalizing information onto knowledge. There are various issues associated with
<strong>the</strong> above knowledge, which makes organizing, storing, sharing and disseminating knowledge
difficult.
Meanwhile, KMS is defined as “an I.T.-based system developed to support and augments <strong>the</strong>
organizational process <strong>of</strong> knowledge creation, storage, retrieval, transfer and application” (Alavi &
Leidner, 2000). In our previous studies, a KMS framework for collaborative SM was established and
validated (see Figure 1). The framework defines <strong>the</strong> KMS and SM components and processes
necessary to effectively manage a collaborative SM environment.
To support <strong>the</strong> above KMS framework, an integrated tool called S<strong>of</strong>tware Maintenance Collaborative
Agent Team (SmCAT) was developed. SmCAT includes <strong>the</strong> management <strong>of</strong> helpdesk, maintenance
request planning, development, and management <strong>of</strong> domain and SM process knowledge. The
process architecture <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> tool is depicted in Figure 2.
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