Considerations for an organizational memory in software development

We believe that the efficiency and productivity of software development processes can be dramatically increased by making the knowledge gained during past projects persistent and thus reusable for future projects. We plead for the establishment of a computer supported organizational memory for software development organizations. Furthermore, we feel that the accelerated growth of software process modeling techniques provides a convenient equipment for the realization of what we propose. A process model is an explicit representation of process knowledge and may thus serve as a means for storing and retrieving organizational knowledge about software process execution. Thus, we argue for reusing software process models. An organizational memory for software development organizations may be implemented by populating and structuring a process model library and providing mechanisms for retrieving and tailoring process models in order to apply them during the execution (management) of projects.