LEARNING SOFTWARE ORGANIZATIONS A Literature Review on Impact of Organizational Learning on Success of Software Process Improvement Activities

Abstract

Software has become an indispensible part of our lives and its importance is continually increasing in each day. Software development organizations are forced to produce software more and more rapidly with an acceptable quality and within an acceptable budget. However, life is not so easy in software development. Software development organizations face with problems in delivery of software products on time within the budget and having required quality and majority of these problems are related with management. Software process improvement (SPI) approaches are introduced to solve the problems in software development. Knowledge is in the core of software development so knowledge management plays an important role in success of SPI activities. Organizations should become learning organizations otherwise continuous improvement in software development cannot be achieved. Software development organizations are knowledge intensive organizations so a special term, Learning Software Organization, has been introduced for explaining the organizational learning in software development organizations. In this paper, the impact of knowledge management and organizational learning on success of SPI approaches will be discussed based on a literature review. The idea behind becoming Learning Software Organization and relationship of it with success of SPI approaches will be investigated

Keywords

• Software Process Improvement, Knowledge Management, Organizational Learning, Learning Software Organizations

References

1. Abrahamsson, P., Salo, O., Ronkainen, J. and Warsta, J. (2002). Agile software development and methods - review and analysis. VTT publications 478, Espoo.
2. Ahlgren,R. (2011). Software Patterns, Organizational Learning and Software Process Improvement, ISBN 978-951-39-4173-4. University of Jyvaskyla.
3. Akgün, A.E., Lynn, G.S., and Reilly, R. (2002). Multi-dimensionality of learning in new product development teams, European Journal of Innovation Management 5(2), 57-72.
4. Argote, L. (1999). Organizational learning: creating, retaining, and transferring knowledge. 1999. USA: Kluwer Academic Publishers.
5. Basili, V. R. & Caldiera, G. (1995). Improve Software Quality by Reusing Knowledge and Experience, Sloan Management Review, pp. 55–64.
6. Basili, V. R., Caldiera, G., and Rombach, H. D. (1994), Experience Factory, In J. J. Marciniak (eds.) in Encyclopedia of Software Engineering, vol. 1, pp. 469-476. John Wiley & Sons, New York
7. Cook, S.D.N & Brown J.S.(1999). Bridging Epistomologies: The Generative Dance Between Organizational Knowledge and Organizational Knowing, Organization Science, Vol. 10, No. 4, pp. 381-400
8. Dyba T. (2001). Enabling Software Process Improvement: An Investigation of the Importance of Organizational Issues. Doctoral Dissertation, Norwegian University of Science and Technology

9. Dyba T. (2005), An Empirical Investigation of the Key Factors for Success in Software Process Improvement, IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, Vol. 31, No. 5
10. Easterby-Smith, M., Crossan, M. and Nicolini, D. (2000). Organizational learning: debates past, present and future. Journal of management studies 37 (6), 783–796.
11. Easterby-Smith, M. and Lyles, M. A. (2005). The Blackwell Handbook of Organizational Learning and Knowledge Management. Blackwell Publishing, USA.
12. Garvin, D. A. (1993). Building a learning organisation, Harward Bus. Rev., July - August, pp. 78 - 91.
13. Gasston, J., Halloran, P. (1999). Continuous Software Process Improvement Requires Organisational Learning: An Australian Case Study, Software Quality Journal, 8, 37 - 51 Gibbs,W.W. (1994). Software’s Chronic Crisis, Scientific American, Vol. 271, September pp.72-81
14. Goldenson, D.; Herbsleb, J. D. (1995). After the Appraisal: A Systematic Survey of Process Improvement, its Benefits, and Factors that Influence Success.” (Technical report CMU/SEI-95-TR-009). Software Engineering Institute, Pittsburgh, PA.
15. Hayes M. (2003). Precious Connection, InformationWeek, pp. 34-50,
16. Heikkilä, M. (2009). Learning and Organizational Change in SPI Initiatives. In F. Bomarius et al. (Eds.): PROFES 2009, LNBIP 32, Berlin Heidelberg,Springer- Verlag, 216–230. Huber, G.P. (1991). Organizational learning: The contributing processes and the literatures. Organization science 2 (1), 71-87.
17. Humphrey, W.S. (1989). Managing Software Process. Addison-Wesley Professional
18. Huysman, M. (2000). Rethinking the organizational learning: analyzing learning processes of information system designers. Accounting, Management and Information Technology 10, 81-99.
19. Kurt, S., Hunnius, J. P., Basili V. (2002). Experience in Implementing a Learning Software Organization. IEEE Software May/June pp. 46 - 49
20. Mathiassen, L. and Pedersen, K. (2005). The dynamics of knowledge in systems development practice. In Proceedings of the 38th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences. IEEE, 233a - 233a.
21. Mathiassen, L. and Pourkomeylian, P. (2003). Managing knowledge in a software organization. Journal of Knowledge Management 7 (2), 63-80.
22. Mathiassen, L., Pries-Heje, J. and Ngwenyama, O. (2001). Improving Software Organizations – From principles to Practice. Addison-Wesley.
23. Meehan B., Richardson I.(2002). Identification of Software Process Knowledge Management, Software Process Improvement and Practice, 7, 47-55 (DOI: 10.1002/spip.154) Nasir, M.H.N.M., Ahmad, R. and Hassan, N.H. (2008). An empirical study of barriers in the implementation of software process improvement project in Malaysia. Journal of Applied Sciences 8 (23), 4362-4368.
24. Niazi M., Wilson, D., Zowghi, D. (2006). Critical success factors for software process improvement implementation: an empirical study. Software Process: Improvement and Practice. Special Issue on Free or Open Source Software Development (F/OSSD) Projects 11(2), 193 - 211.
25. Nonaka I., Takeuchi H. (1995) - The Knowledge-Creating Company: How Japanese Companies Create the Dynamics of Innovation, Oxford University Press, 1995.
26. Rainer, A., Hall T. (2002), Key Success factors for implementing software process improvement: a maturity based analysis”, Journal of Systems and Software, 62 (2): p.71-84
27. Ruhe G. (1999). 11th International Conference on Software Engineering and Knowledge Engineering, SEKE'99, Kaiserslautern, Germany, June 16-19.
28. SEI (2010). CMMI® for Development, Version 1.3 Software Engineering Institute, Carniege Mellon Univercity.
29. SEMA (2009). Process Maturity Profile of the Software Community, Software Engineering Institute, Carnegie-Mellon University.
30. Stelzer, D., Mellis W. (1999), Success Factors of Organizational Change in Software Process Improvement,” Software Process Improvement and Practice, Volume 4, Issue 4, John Wiley & Sons Ltd
31. The Standish Group, (2009). CHAOS Summary Report, The Standish Group International
32. Thibodeau, P. & Rosencrance, L. (2002). Users Losing Billions Due to Bugs. Computerworld, vol. 36, no. 27, pp. 1-2
33. Wiegers, Karl E.(1996). Software Process Improvement: Ten Traps to Avoid.” www.processimpact.com
34. Zahran, S. (1998). Software Process Improvement: Practical Guidelines for Business Success, Harlow, England: Addison-Wesley.