Integrating Project Management, Software Development, and Knowledge Management Models: A Case Study in a Public ICT Services Organization

In project-based organizations knowledge is a critical resource used to develop and deliver products and services with a high level of quality. Therefore, a systematic and sustainable process is necessary to coordinate knowledge management, project management and product lifecycle. This scenario predominates in companies focused on the creation and maintenance of information systems. This article presents an exploratory study based on a framework that integrates cognitive, managerial, and operational processes in a public Brazilian organization that provides services in the area of information and communications technology, focusing on the construction and maintenance of information systems. Those processes are operationalized by three management models considering knowledge, project, and software development processes. Our proposal aims to understand the relationships between those three management models and their influence on the software development process in the organization under study. Our premise is based on the principle that cognitive management, project management, and software development management must be integrated to fulfill the demands of product development and service provision. The research data was composed of registers of working hours spent on software development and maintenance projects involving 244 people allocated to 5064 projects in the period from 2007 to 2013. The study resulted in the identification of the relationships among the three management models adopted by the organization, with emphasis on knowledge management activities, which were not directly identified, making it difficult to account for and measure them. We established a set of activities connected to each one of the knowledge management model phases. Since those activities were not visible before, our approach contributed to build a systematic process to register and relate activities linked to the dimensions of cognitive processes, project management, and software construction.

Interpreting Nestedness and Modularity Structures in Affiliation Networks: An Application in Knowledge Networks Formed by Software Project Teams

An understanding of the knowledge creation and diffusion process in the organizational context is extremely relevant. Because from this understanding, organizations can restructure processes, reorient teams and implement methodologies to assist in the construction of an evolutionary process of knowledge creation and diffusion aimed at sustainable growth and innovation. The theory of complex social networks has been applied in several fields to help understand organizational cognitive processes. However, these approaches still insipiently consider the analysis of the nestedness and modularity of the studied networks. In this article, we presented an approach that sought to identify patterns of nestedness and modularity in networks of affiliation of people in projects in the organizational context. The study sought to identify these patterns in affiliation networks in a public organization providing information technology services in the period from 2006 to 2013. The detection of these patterns was performed using the NODF (Nestedness metric based on Overlap and Decreasing Fill) algorithm described by [1]. The nestedness and modularity metrics can influence patterns of knowledge creation and diffusion in formal and informal networks constituted for the execution of projects in organizations. This study showed that the network structures of the organization during the study period presented a high degree of nestedness, and it was possible to identify combined structures of nestedness and modularity.

Dynamics of Knowledge in Software Project Development Environments: An Approach Using Affiliation Networks

This work presents an approach to study the diffusion of knowledge in software development project teams based on the formation of complex social network structures in a public organization that offers information and communication technology services. We collected historical data on the allocation and records of hours worked by people in projects to build an affiliation network. We applied the method of reflections to analyze the data obtained. The constructed model enabled the description of the participation of project team members from the perspective of the creation and diffusion of knowledge in affiliation networks that describe the participation of people in projects, mediated by the knowledge and the capabilities developed for the execution of these projects. A contribution of this work is the construction of indicators related to the process of creation and diffusion of knowledge in the context of the execution of software development and maintenance projects, based on the concepts of diversification and ubiquity applied to the process of knowledge diffusion;an additional contribution is the presentation of an application of the method of reflections in an organizational context applied to the creation and diffusion of knowledge. We found that the application of management models associated with the collaborative method applied to the project development process contributed to the joint growth of diversified and more specialized knowledge alongside the knowledge considered more generic and ubiquitous. Our results show that contrary to previous expectations based on assumptions established at the beginning of the study, we concluded that in six of the seven subnetworks obtained in the period between 2007 and 2013, knowledge based on complex and diversified capabilities showed a growth proportional to the growth of knowledge related to the capabilities necessary to more general and ubiquitous activities.

Accuracy of Rapid Prototyping Biomodels Plotted by Three Dimensional Printing Technique:Ex Vivo Study

The rapid prototyping biomodels manufacturing is a recent technology with great importance in oral and maxillofacial surgery. It provides a better surgical planning, decrease of anesthesia time and great functional and esthetic results. The aim of this experimental study was to evaluate the accuracy of rapid prototyping biomodels built by three-dimensional printing (3DP) technique, since this is one of the least expensive methods available. Linear measurements of standardized bone defects and anatomic distances were compared using a digital caliper of high precision in nine dry mandibles (gold standard) and their respective biomodels. The Bland-Altman test was used for statistical analysis (5% level of significance). The results showed strong concordance between the dry mandibles and their respective biomodels, with discrepancies smaller than 2 mmin most cases (97.4%). We can conclude that the biomodels built by 3DP technique can be used for surgical planning in Dentistry.