The boiled frog problem [knowledge management]

As many of the most knowledgeable personnel in technically complex businesses approach retirement, there is a need to capture their knowledge. The temptation is for management to ignore the problem until it is too late. The article discusses how a company can identify employees who possess valuable undocumented knowledge, evaluate whether the knowledge is worth capturing, elicit, represent, and preserve the valuable knowledge, and share this knowledge with other personnel when needed.     

Recommender systems for personal knowledge management in collaborative environments

Personal knowledge management (PKM) is different from the traditional centralized knowledge management (KM) modes. The PKM is suitable for distributed collaborative KM environments. This paper makes an explorative study on the PKM, and analyzes various forms of personal knowledge resources in the product development process. Then a model of recommender systems for PKM is proposed for knowledge sharing among members in the collaborative environment. The key function of the PKM recommender systems is to supply potentially useful personal knowledge resources from the sites where these knowledge resources are created to the sites where the members may need the knowledge. The PKM is in a mode of distributed control rather than a mode of centralized control, which is widely used by traditional KM methods and tools. This study paves a way for developing an advanced mode of KM platforms for PKM sharing in collaborative environments.     

Agent based approach for organization and personal knowledge modelling: knowledge management perspective

The paper tries to bridge gap between knowledge management and artificial intelligence approaches proposing agent-based framework for modelling organization and personal knowledge. The perspective of knowledge management is chosen to develop two conceptual models—one describes the intelligent enterprise memory, another models an intelligent organization’s knowledge management system. The concept of an agent-based environment of the knowledge worker for personal and organizational knowledge management support is introduced.     

基于Tag的个人知识管理系统的设计与实现

针对移动互联网时代个人知识管理缺乏简单、灵活的知识管理工具的状况,提出基于Tag的个人知识管理系统设计方案,搭建了适应于Android、iOS、Windows Phone平台的服务器端三层架构,并实现了Android客户端。该系统能满足移动互联网环境下个人知识记录、组织、检索以及分享的需求。     

Brainstorming, influence, and icebergs [project management]

Brainstorming done right is an exhilarating, exhausting process. The personnel mix in a brainstorming group is crucial. Ideally, the group includes at least one and at most two "idea fountain" types, the kind of people whose brains automatically generate 10 ideas for every one being discussed. The group also should include at least one person who strongly wants useful results out of the session, such as the team leader or an architect looking for a solution to a particularly vexing problem. One team member should be someone who has the mental horsepower to keep pace with the intellectual sprinters but is willing to stay half a step behind them during the session to help spot strengths and weaknesses in the ideas they are volleying back and forth. This person subtly helps direct the group's energies toward the most promising ideas, after enough time has been spent generating them.     

The robotics body of knowledge [Education]

The article gives a wake up call on the need of an organized effort in robotics education. A brief overview of the special issue of the International Journal of Engineering Education, which offered some insight into the current trends in robotics education, is given. A range of robotics programs that can be offered at the bachelor's degree level and how these mesh with existing programs are described. Finally, the need for the robotics community to establish its body of knowledge is stressed     

Access denied [digital rights management]

Digital rights management (DRM), technology and law, threaten the entire system of discourse on which progress is built. It is based on a reductionist model, in which creativity and innovation are isolated actions supplied according to the economic returns promised to those who are successful. Yet science, innovation, and creativity are dynamic systems chat require open discourse and readily available information to flourish. The core flaw in DRM laws and technology is the model of author as sole creator, rather than as a part of a system. The article enumerates the dramatic threats to the system of creation and innovation that the author believes exist in DRM law and technology.     

Leverage your lessons [project management]

In today's fast-moving market, software project teams don't have time to make several attempts to meet a customer's requirements. Teams need to be smart about what they do learning from the experiences of colleagues within their own organization and in the industry. In short, teams need to take the time to do things as “right” as they can because they don't have time to do things over. Why do we often have to do things over? Why do we repeat the mistakes of the past? It's related to this: Insanity is doing things the same way we did them before, but expecting different results. It's hard for a team to get better at what it's doing if it doesn't think about its work and how to improve it. Some project teams do, in fact, think about how and why their projects worked. They gather and document lessons learned. Some teams share that information with others in their organization, and a few teams attempt to review what others have learned as they start a new project or new phase of a project. But many teams do none of this. They're the ones that encounter the same problems over and over again, attributing them to bad luck when, in fact, poor project learning and poor organizational learning are the underlying causes     

Hallucinations at 37,000 feet [project management]

While on a flight from LA to New York, the author had some very strange ideas floating around in his head. He can trace their germination back to two novels he read on previous flights, both about project management: The Deadline, by T. DeMarco (1997), and The Critical Chain, by E. Goldratt (1997). In the former, the hero is an intrepid software project manager; in the latter he is a brilliant project consultant. Focusing on these books, the author examines various project management issues     

The usefulness of hindsight [DP management]

History shows that user and data issues remain core development concerns. The two most important part of a computing system are the users and their data, in that order. This issue has two aspects: standardizing the data usage, as in the second of the two anecdotes, and blocking invalid data on its way in to programs.     

Technical management: Best shaken, not stirred [The Last Byte]

Compares creating and managing the perfect design team - and the perfect chip - to creating the perfect martini.     

A little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing [knowledgemanagement]

After studying knowledge management in recent years, wondering if it could help me manage software projects better, I have concluded that indeed it can. To illustrate this point, I list potential knowledge management benefits and drawbacks organized around the classical functions software managers perform     

Improving service while controlling costs [software management]

The need for performance engineering is described in terms software managers can use to make the case to upper management. Performance engineering is defined as a method for constructing systems to meet performance objectives. As a development approach, it lies between the extremes of performance-driven development and fixing it later. Some successful applications of this approach are examined