Knowledge worker (article_2)

In the present time every business enterprise is looking to leverage their knowledge within infrastructure to get the maximum advantage. Whatever may be the strategy towards the implementation of the knowledge management system, the efforts must be start from the people within the organization. It shows that the importance is on people who are working on the knowledge management, no matter how good the technology used in the systems. In a way the employees are knowledge worker , who is working on the context of the organization and they are using their knowledge and experiences acquired through their life to carry forward with the organization.

The word ‘knowledge worker’ is introduced by Peter Drucker back in 1959 in his book Landmarks of Tomorrow. Knowledge workers are supposed to customize their information to create and to innovate the solution for the business process (Sloman, 2007). Knowledge worker is not concentrating on the training given to him; rather they are concentrated in continuous learning using the experiences and the insight. As per Ian Caddy they are common people who are supposed to carry out their work because of their ability to receive, absorb the proper information and neglect the unwanted information (2007). As a knowledge worker the person involves in a number of different complex processes such as searching, interpreting, connecting the information, manipulating the ideas, engaging in conversation which eventually leads to collaborative learning and developing relations with the others (Lilia Efimova, 2004).

According to Henard, David, McFadyen and Ann there are different knowledge worker roles carried out in an organization and they are acquiring, applying, creating, sharing and leveraging roles (2008). All these are inculcated within the organization context itself. Furthermore, some knowledge workers have got the ability to carry out more than one role within the business context, which boosts the business process. The value of the knowledge worker who performs multiple roles than the others who are supposed to stick to one role is high (Caddy, 2007).

The value given to the knowledge worker is not easy to calculate in the business perspective. Davenport claimed that management, organization, workplace design and IT influence the knowledge based organizations which puts the same effect on the knowledge workers (2002).The buzz of the word knowledge worker is personal for some people, their assumption is different from the organizational context and they believe in self centered autonomous working without any monitoring. From the organizational point of view, the autonomy of the worker is not acceptable. According to Davenport the work place design is also an important catalyst in knowledge based organization (2002). But most of the organizations are not making the most from this work place design.

To bridge this gap Davenport suggested two ideas, they are segmentation and providing individual choice(2002).By giving the power to configure their working environment will motivate the knowledge worker, it gives the feeling of autonomy and self satisfaction to work hard. The freedom to customize their own environment is critical in the case successful knowledge worker (Davenport 2002). Segmentation of the working environment is carried out by the organization to boost the environment of the knowledge worker. Segmentation can be classified as low, moderate and high according to the approach towards the knowledge worker from the perspective of the organization.

As per Efimova the activities of the knowledge workers be classified in three levels and they are individual, ideas and communities (2004).All these three levels are came into action when there is enough conversation and collaboration within the business context. But to involve in a particular conversation, a person must need some kind of awareness or experience within them, so that they can share their insights. The individual comes into action when the person is capable of establishing and maintaining the relationship with the communities or networks (Efimova, 2004). The reason behind the idea is because of the ability to sense, organize and to innovate new solution towards the business success.

In the end the value given by the organization to the knowledge worker must be sufficient enough to satisfy him within their infrastructure. The Knowledge worker enjoys the significant autonomy provided by the organization and they feel free to work within the infrastructure for the organization. Whatever may be the technological advance in the enterprise level, the employees are always the same and organization must give the sufficient value towards them to boost their moral values.

Reference:

• Caddy, I., 2007, Identifying Knowledge Workers: Using Direct Versus Indirect Approaches, Employment Relations Record, Vol. 7, No.2

• Cantrell, S., Davenport, T., Thomas, R., 2002, The mysterious art and science of knowledge-worker performance, MIT Sloan Management Review, Vol 44, No.1

• Efimova, L., 2004, Discovering the iceberg of knowledge work: A weblog case, OKLC, Available: https://doc.telin.nl/dscgi/ds.py/Get/File-34786

• Henard, David, H., McFadyen, M., Ann, 2008, Making knowledge workers more creative, Research Technology Management, Vol 51, Issue 2, Pages: 40(7).

• Sloman, M., 2007, Financial Times.com, London (UK): updated on 12th November 2007, accessed on 27th March 2009.Available:http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?did=1381601501&Fmt=3&clientId=42294&RQT=309&VName=PQD

Corporate view - Web 2.0 (article 1)

In recent years the view of World Wide Web is changed dramatically, in a way as no one expected. Being a simple website is nothing special now, but being in the interactive sessions are preferred by the public. All these changes came into notice when the new term ’web 2.0’ was introduced by Dale Dougherty in a conference in the year of 2004. As per Dale web 2.0 is an economic, social, technical trend which is the basis of the next generation computing with characteristics of openness, networking effect and collaborative participation (Musser, 2006).

The inventor of WWW, Tim Berners lee’s vision was to create a single global collaborative information space. From the early time of web itself the large organization made the most from the web. They started gaining business and eventually lead to the business success. Even though the area of research and development in the computer science field is around 60 years, which is very small compared to other branches like, mechanical and electrical engineering, the innovations in the computer field is exponentially high. In the computer industry the transition or change is not a big deal, people are ready to accept the changes and interesting scenario is most of us don’t know when did the change happened, although they were using the latest versions. This happened in the case of web also, after the new technologies introduced in the web itself, people are using that without knowing the change. When Dale Dougherty introduced the term web 2.0, at that time everybody was surprised because of the buzz of the word. At that time most of the people are using the incarnation of the web itself, in other way they were in the environment of web 2.0.

John Musser claims that the organizations which are ready to implement web 2.0 technologies within their infrastructure and to the market have got much more chance of getting the competitive advantage compared to others (2006). Web 2.0 as whole we can say that, it’s a set of technologies and approaches which is meant for collaborative intelligence,
learning and improvement in two way direction (Jones,2008). There are a lot of new services which can be considered as part of web 2.0 and these are social networking, blogs, wiki’s, syndications, tagging etc. The question arise here is how these new age technologies going to support the organization in their culture. In the early days the computer industry transformed from enterprise user towards the home user. From then it changed to USB, instant messages, and web based applications (Gutmans, 2006).

Now the organizations are using the wiki to know the progress of projects as it supports the collaborative editing by the authorized people (Anderson, 2007). And vast uses of external and internal blogs are popular in the organization (Gutmans, 2006). The estimate numbers of blogs nowadays are 75m; it shows the popularity of the blogs. A good example of organization using blog as tool is a UK based company named, Favorit Limited. The company specializes in bringing collective media towards a mass worldwide internet audience, and they also simplify the complicated online contents to the end users (Jones, 2008). One of the reasons of growing importance of the web 2.0 in the organization is the change in the business applications. Although the organizations are willing to use the wiki’s, blogs, podcasting they were not considered as critical tool for the business success. The main thing we need is application service providing (ASP) or software on demand, which supports the business (Gutmans, 2006).

Web 2.0 can be used as tactic in the organization in two way, first one is to allow the full participation of the customer, results in capturing the collective knowledge which eventually helps in enhancing the product. The second point put forwarded by the Kim Jones is the improved team communication and the collaboration in the organization(2008). One of the main thing to notice in implementing the web 2.0 technologies is , it must be user oriented. In the past the web approach was from top to bottom, without giving any attention towards the end user. Now scenario is changed to bottom-up approach, first know the customers then implement according to their interest (Jones, 2008).

It all shows that just applying the new technologies to the organization is not the solution. The sign of successful organization are strong leadership, innovation and change management which results in the competitive advantage. The organization needs to know the socio economical effects which are going to happen as an after effect of the new implementation. There must be a need for the organization rather than a trend of new technology. In the level of IT the changes are enormous, because we need a lot more computer power and bandwidth which inculcate the amount of applications used in the web 2.0. The other part of IT infrastructure is using the open standard software for the applications which eventually reduce the cost dramatically (Jones, 2008). The open standard helps to exchange the data between the applications or to make one application call to other. In the next level this will lead to more specialized application, which can be bought and integrate with our web based application(Gutmans, 2006).

Conclusively every business enterprises are ready to use the web 2.0 as their driving force to get the advantage, whether it may be a small or large organization. Now the concentration is on the end user, so every organization is ready to provide whatever may be the end user’s expectation to maintain their business processes and move towards the success. It all shows that enterprises as an entity doesn’t exist, but the interaction between the people and the organization are keeping the organization’s breath.


Reference:


• Musser. J, 2006, Web 2.0 Principles and Best Practices,
Available: oreilly.com/catalog/web2report/chapter/web20_report_excerpt.pdf (Accessed March 27,2009)


• Jones. K, 2008, Managing a Web 2.0 Strategy.
Available:http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/09550f26-410b-11dd-9661- 0000779fd2ac.html?nclick_check=1 (Accessed March 28, 2009)


• Gutmans. A, 2006, PHP Leads Web 2.0: A Closer Look at the Hidden Drivers and Enablers of the Second Internet Revolution,
Available:www.zend.com/topics/php_leads_web2_0.pdf (Accessed March 18, 2009)


• Anderson. P, 2007, what is Web 2.0? Ideas, technologies and implications for education, JISC Technology and Standards Watch.
Available: www.jisc.ac.uk/media/documents/techwatch/tsw0701b.pdf(Accessed February 25, 2009).

articles....

Coming bloody soon.....

MJ

:)

hi all

Atlast .....everybody completed their work.......Anyway.....now its time for three articles...

In the group work...we had enough arguments, conflicts, which resulted in nothing.....but...its done.......Now i'm feeling good being here.....which is a contradiction

what i have said yesterday......

all happens here.....

anyway....

ceeyaaaa

MJ :)

....

after a long day nothing happend ,,,but a lot more happend in my head...

Being here from january, this is the first time ..I'm feeling bad being here.....

that's it.....nothing else....

MJ

(ICW) Integral part of software quality assurance is the use of CASE tools

INTRODUCTION

.............................In today’s software industry, quality is one of the important factors. In general software quality may be defined as absence of any defect. Quality of software is characterized by factors such as it must be on time, bug free, on specification, within budget and also maintainable. Quality assurance and quality control comes in play on the process of software development. Quality assurance plays a key role from the starting of the process, which deals with keeping up the standard or policy within every phase of the software development. Computer Aided Software Engineering tools commonly known as CASE tools and these are used in the software process to create error free, good quality software products. From the past itself there are a lot of tools such as linker, loader, complier etc to help the software process. In the current context, computers are becoming prominent everywhere, and software in them are becoming more complex, it results in the development of support tools also.

...................................This essay will explain software quality assurance and the importance of quality assurance in software process. And also explains the use of CASE tools in quality assurance which is a part of software development itself. This essay will also cover the CASE environments in the field. Although the CASE tools are not the answer to the software process, still it can be used to get more efficient software products within the time limit as per the user specification. It all claims that the use of CASE tools will boost up the software quality process.


QUALITY

............................Generally quality can be defined as reaching the user requirement each and every time, and also within the budget and on time. Quality of a software product is completely relying on the end user expectation, since the software is customer oriented. Quality of the software differs for different people because of the difference in the perspective thinking. Quality can b also defined as lack of defects and problems. In a way we can say that software problems and defects are the measuring metrics of the quality of the software quality. Eventually software problems and defects are inversely proportional to the quality of the software (Florac, 1992). Different software quality attributes such as efficiency, reliability, correctness, and completeness and usability are used as the criteria for the measurement of problem and defects in software ( Florac, 1992).In all of the software life cycle method testing plays an important part. The reason is software vendors don’t want to give some kind of software to the end user, but a good quality, error free software. Because of that a lot of time and money is used for the purpose of creating the quality within the software. Reworking within the software is much harder, time consuming, so to avoid that every process is made in a certain standard. This process is commonly known as software quality assurance.



QUALITY ASSURANCE

................................Software Quality Assurance (SQA) is a systematic pattern of actions which is necessary to deliver enough confidence that the service or product conforms to specified technical requirements. As defined by J.Greene (2001) SQA covers different parts such as benchmarking, process improvement, estimating, risk assessment, progress control and reporting. Process improvement enables the improvement in the standard of every process within the organization. Each process results in different way to improve the quality of the software product J.Greene (2001).In a different way SQA verifies whether planning and implementation is done according to standards, and also the procedures are performed according to the planning(BSSC,1995).

...........................As mentioned above software quality is characterized by a number of different factors. All these factors are used indirectly in the case of quality. At the same time we can improve the process within every step of the software life cycle. The quantitative factors such as error per unit time can be measured directly. Both qualitative and quantitative can be collected and kept in the knowledge base of the SQA management (Chou, David C, 1994). Measuring software product quality and measuring software process quality are the two different methods to calculate the metrics of the software (Chou, David C, 1994).

...........................There is always confusion between the exact difference between the quality control and quality assurance. Quality control is operational activities which are used for the fulfilling of the requirements. Its basically product oriented approach rather than process oriented in quality assurance. Finding the defects is one of the important tasks in quality control; because of this it’s reactive in nature. Testing, inspection and check point review are considered to be the part of quality control. In a way we can conclude that quality assurance only concentrates on prevention of defects, within the QA quality control plays an important part too.


CASE tools

................................Computer aided software engineering tools are used for the purpose of simplifying the process of high complexity software engineering. From the early days, there has been an awareness of using automated tools to help the programming. Loader, linker, assembler etc are some tools used in the past. There was a huge difference in the approach towards the software product from the past to now. Software engineering expanded in the way of doing things (Carnegie Mellon University, 2007).The software process became large activity including a number of people from different departments. Delivering the software to the customer is not the end of the process, but there is a lot of scope in enhancing the software from the feedback from the end user. All these resulted in the improvement in the CASE tools itself (Carnegie Mellon University, 2007). One of the main problem is software project team which is using a CASE tool selects another tool, without the formal evaluations.

.................................In the early days CASE tool is mainly used for some specific tasks such as document production, version control and design method support. These kinds of tools are supporting the isolate processes which are not directly improving the engineering process as a whole. If all these isolated tools are used together in a particular scenario, then it will be considered as a CASE environment. Typical CASE environments basically consist of group of tools which works under the same hardware or software, although not every member is familiar with all the tools in the environment. For example software developers use the tools for the purpose of the designing and coding the application at the same time system administrator uses the tool to maintain and update the software and a hardware platform (Carnegie Mellon University, 2007). The different roles carried out by the people in the organization will interact with multiple CASE tools and the environment; eventually it creates a CASE environment.

.................................Software development team uses a CASE tool which is assembled over the period in the product life cycle. The new technologies and the tools which is introduced to the software industry makes the scenario more confusing, because its not easy to understand the tasks supported by the tool and to how much time the tool will save (Baik, 2000).


Effects of CASE tools

...............................CASE tools have got the capability of improving the software development productivity, reducing the cost and also improving the quality.During different phases in software development lifecycle software vendors use different tools. The user interface is also the same for different CASE tools, which is under the CASE environment. Analysis of CASE tool integration is generally separated into three functional areas: data, control, and presentation integration (Zarrella, 1990). It is clear that CASE tools improved the productivity and quality by automated processes in the life cycle. But it’s not widely acceptable in the case of evaluation criteria, even though there are many tools in the software industry, which hikes the productivity and the quality.


CASE tools-CRITICISM

..............................CASE tools which we are using now are capable to enforce a limited range of product standards. Although the capabilities of CASE tools are developing rapidly, still they are not flexible (Huff, Morris, Smith, Zarrella, 1992). The sequence of activities followed by and also the enforced actual standard is inflexible. In the case of automation of the software process CMMI tools supports only very few methods and supports very few auditing (Huff et .al, 1992). Zarrella (1990) stated that there are integration problem in the CASE tool which is identified on the basis of the perspective of the end-user. They are single-vendor tool integration, multiple-vendor tool integration, operating environment integration, development process integration, and end-user integration.

...............................When a single vendor offers a set of tools, the user may be constrained to a particular usefulness of the tool (Zarrella, 1990). The flexibility of changing the interfaces of the tool is much difficult in the case of the single vendor integration, so the user is restricted in a way which is not good. .The main problem with the external integration directly underlines the importance of standards and also the integration of the tool or interface with the other costs a lot. Ultimately, giving the standardization will cause more coding by end user to change that according to them. At the end the end user may act as integrator itself. Operating environment integration is an issue for the CASE tool in all the time. The tools used are always restricted to a particular environment which is surrounded by a specific operating system and may be by the hardware components (Zarrella, 1990). Configuration management is also an issue when it came into change from one particular tool to another, which causes a lot of time and money to change the things. End user integration is also a major challenge in adopting the CASE tools. Because by introducing some new tools for the organization is a big task. Since the time for learning and training the staff needs a time. The learning curve toward the new tools is of the employees is very steep in the case of introduction of tools (Zarrella, 1990).

............................CASE tools are capable of supporting the problems in reverse engineering and re-engineering in a limited way. Unfortunately, there is little support for the generation of data models from code (Huff et .al, 1992). Tool interoperability is also considered as one of the main issues in the CASE tools. The main reason in lack of tool interoperability is different standards put forwarded by the different vendors and the industry groups (Huff et .al, 1992). Poor interoperability also plays in between the vendors, so that customer is assumed to select a particular tool, which satisfies the requirements, but not all the requirement. Here customer is making them adjustable towards the tool in order to satisfy some requirement. Another main issue with the interoperability is use of different lifecycles during the software development process. So the transition takes a lot of time, as it needs a lot of time is needed to re enter output from one stage, which is supposed to be the input of the following stage (Huff et .al, 1992). Another main issue with the use of CASE tool is lack of proper data for the further use, in fact most of the coding and development is done by the tool itself, and the information is misleading and sometime its worse.

.............................The criticism mentioned till now is based on the work done by the CASE tool in a software development cycle. There are some aspects that cannot be done by the CASE tools at any time. Whatever may be the technology improves themselves, its all applied by human beings itself. So there are certain things in the software life cycle which cannot be done any kind of CASE tool. Fixing an organizational problem and getting involved in the insight of the requirement and also motivating themselves to the next level are only capable by the humans itself (Huff et .al, 1992). Measuring the entire quality of the software product as a whole is done completely by individuals.



CONCLUSION

..............................From the time, when we started using the computing as a tool there are a lot of tools are evolved to help the process of computing. These kinds of tools helped to improve the productivity and eventually it enhanced the quality of the system itself. The end user is considered to be most important factor in the case of software quality, so by satisfying the end user, we will get the maximum productivity. Quality as a whole is considered to be the most important aspect of the software product or services. For that there a lot quality management is done through out the entire phases of the product life cycle. CASE tools are also helping the programmers in designing and coding to a higher level. However there is certain issue which is concerned about the CASE tools. So by just applying the new tools towards the life cycle won’t improve the whole activity, it needs a lot of compromise to get the desired outcome. So the use of CASE tools must be in a particular way such that it should improve the environment and also at the same time its not good to rely completely on the CASE tools. The limited and the controlled use of the CASE tool is the only way to improve the quality of the entire software lifecycle, although the use of CASE tool is not the optimum to assure the quality of the software product or services.





References:

Florac, W. (1992).Software Quality Measurement: A Framework for Counting Problems and Defects, Software Engineering Institute.

ESA Board for Software Standardization and Control (BSSC), (1995), Guide to software quality assurance.


Baik. J, (2000), The effects of CASE tools on software development effort, Dissertation.

Zarrella.P, (1990), CASE Tool Integration and Standardization, CASE Technology Project for Software Engineering Institute.

Greene, J. (2001), Software Quality Assurance (SQA) Of Management Processes Using the SEI Core Measures, Quantitative Software Management Ltd.

Chou, David, C. (1994), Software quality assurance in CASE tools, Information Systems Management, 10580530, Vol. 11, Issue 2.


Huff.C, Morris.E, Smith.D, Zarrella.P, (1992) , Proceedings of the CA Management Workshop, CASE Technology Project for Software Engineering Institute.

http://www.sei.cmu.edu/legacy/case/case_whatis.html modified on 11 January 2009, viewed on 19 February 2009.

hi...

I guess everybody is working on KM group course work and articles, nowadays....
Even though we are working on the KM group coursework to finish it, there are enough conflicts within the views.....that's quite interesting for me....and also confusing....

Even I don't know whether I achieved the learning outcome or not.....may be this kind of doubt will be the best learning outcome..that we can expect

On Tuesday we had a presentation on the quality management module ...... presentations that i have seen was good...and interesting to watch...

It was a hard day after presentation, as we are working on the document of KM.....


ceeyaaa

MJ :)

Another urgent notice....

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Good size furnished double room for a single/ couple in a shared house in Hendon. The house is located in the most desirable area, 2 minutes walk to Middlesex University. Close to local amenities; park, shops, Tesco, bus stops (direct bus links to oxford circus) and two underground stations; Golders Green/ Hendon Central. The house has fully furnished communal kitchen, shared bathroom and wireless internet.

Available from now….
Contact:

Praveen MJ (MSc BISM) 07529895790…

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Urgent....

Hi all
If any one who has worked in HR dept or know someone with HR experince, pls let me know.I need an help from u guys....

Thx

MJ :)

hi all

Everybody was busy in their course work and the presentation during the last week .....it was too intense. I enjoyed at the time in full swing. Although I suffered from writer block in the other module course work , i finished it on the time...by luck....

Presentation day was too intense for all the group members of our group....there are continuous arguments, conflicts, stress.....and on and on.......

after the presentation we enjoyed the time being together......and made good relationship with everybody...inside and outside the group.....

anyway....
done for now.....

will meet u all here itself...

ceeyaaa....

MJ