An Ontology-based Method for Knowledge Sharing Measurement in Multi-site Software Development

Abstract

Challenges over multi-site software development are on working in virtual teams and sharing knowledge. It is quite normal that software engineers working in a virtual team have never met face to face in multi-site environments. In addition they have different educational backgrounds and interpret methods in different ways. Software engineering education, training, and practice are different between universities, cities, and countries. As a result, it is difficult to share a piece of knowledge between distributed teams and among remote team members. There are a number of standards that different teams could be referring to. Remote software engineers use a particular standard as their own individual guide and when they share their own knowledge base and terminology is different from those of others.Most issues raised are related to inconsistency in understanding software engineering theories and practice. Therefore sharing knowledge is the challenge and to resolve the differences between the distributed teams we need to understand its key variables of knowledge sharing. In this paper we propose an ontology-based approach for knowledge sharing measurement. Collaboration issues in multi-site software development form into key variables of knowledge sharing. The impact of nature of knowledge on knowledge sharing is focused. A prototype is developed taking Software Engineering Ontology as example.