Supporting the Software Architecture Process with Knowledge Management

Abstract

The aim of this chapter is to describe how the software architecture process can benefit from providing knowledge management support to the software development professional in general and software architects in particular. This chapter focuses on the kinds of support that can be provided to capture and manage architectural knowledge consumed or generated during the software architecture process. The chapter briefly describes different activities of the software architecture process and identifies the kinds of actors involved and their respective knowledge needs. It shows how to organize different elements of architectural knowledge into a meta-model that can be initiated for tailoring organizational specific knowledge models and developing tool support. This chapter is based on the premise that managing knowledge is a management task rather than a technical problem of representing knowledge. Hence, this chapter finally discusses the management aspects by presenting a task model of managing architectural knowledge.