On facilitating knowledge transfer in software design

This paper presents a discussion of the facilitation of expertise sharing a mong software design stakeholders. LOUIS, a prototype research tool, helps to capture much of the contextual information and knowledge in early design meetings that are very often lost soon after the meetings are over. Using LOUIS as a basis, we consider knowledge and skill transfer effects in softw are design tasks. Results from trials indicate that, although not entirely sufficient, process-related knowledge, in the form of argumentation, is use ful to software designers who have reason to re-use that knowledge. A list of recommendations on how those knowledge transfer effects can be further f acilitated is provided. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.