Patterns as objects to manage knowledge in software development organizations

The application of knowledge management strategies is essential to solve several process improvement problems in software engineering organizations. In this area, the definition and use of process patterns is an approach that several authors have extensively discussed. Nevertheless, one of the problems is the difficulty of formalizing the knowledge about the development process using patterns. This article presents the sdPP (Software Development Project Pattern) to support the management of knowledge objects that encapsulate information about the recommended practices to develop specific software projects, including explicit and tacit knowledge on software engineering effective practices. The proposal comprises a data model to define the sdPPs as knowledge objects and a tool to manage their life cycle. The authors carried out an experimental validation where 48 junior software engineers applied the sdPP framework. From the results obtained, we discuss the factors that facilitate the correct creation of sdPPs and the improvement of software product quality using the sdPP proposal. We also analyse the effort to implement the sdPP proposal to introduce knowledge management practices in software development projects and determine usefulness of the knowledge assets to adapt the sdPP framework for effective knowledge sharing in software engineering organizations.