| | | Knowledge Management in Testing |
| | (28/03/2011-20:55) |
| By Federico Leonardo Toledo from Abstracta about knowledge management applied to testing. |
 When I'm looking into any topic, I can't help but immediately compare it to the GeneXus world and, of course, to GXtest as much as possible in relation to the way we or our colleagues work.
In this post in particular I want to share some notes with you about knowledge management, which is a very interesting topic. In this case, I want to approach it from the testing field and from some aspects related to the companies working with GeneXus.
Knowledge Management: Of all the definitions out there, this is the one I liked the most: a set of strategies and processes to identify, capture and leverage knowledge to help the company be more competitive (American Productivity and Quality Center).
Two “types” of knowledge can be found:
• Tacit knowledge: all the knowledge that people possess
• Explicit knowledge: knowledge contained in documents, code, and so on
 Why is knowledge management important?
• Staff turnover (loss of experts). This is becoming more and more frequent in the software industry.
• Changes in technology. Even though GeneXus greatly reduces this issue, we must be aware of new trends, in order to understand how they work and how we can work with them.
• Need for closer relations with customers. Need to reduce response times. Lack of information or ineffective management of this information are no excuse for slow response times.
So, we arrive at the conclusion that this helps to:
• Improve quality
• Reduce costs
Knowledge management follows the steps below:
• Creation
• Capture
• Organization
• Access
• Use
All of them must be “well-oiled” for everything to work properly. Knowledge has to be shared to make it flow. Knowledge, both tacit and explicit, also has to be generated (that is to say, documenting things is not enough; the staff needs to acquire knowledge from internal and external sources).
I have more notes to share but I didn't want to burden you by publishing everything at once. That's why I’ll leave you this question for now: Do you manage the knowledge generated by testing activities? How?
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