1 Towards Goal-Oriented Organizational Learning: Representing and Maintaining Knowledge in an Experience Base1

Abstract

Abstract. Reusing experience in the form of processes, products, and other forms of knowledge is essential for improvement, i.e., reuse of knowledge is the basis for improvement [3]. This paper reports a case study investi-gating the use of a context-oriented representation of soft-ware engineering experiences. Our claim is that the joint description of experiences and their scope of validity (including a context description) may improve 1) the selec-tion of suitable reuse candidates, 2) the adaptation of these candidates to current project goals and characteristics, and 3) the maintenance of experiences. The conduction of a case study (i.e., the development of a house automation system) is described with focus on reuse and experi-ence-based modification of an effort model. Lessons learned and benefits achieved are discussed. As a basis a model for representing software engineering knowledge is also shown, as well as a prototype implementation of an experience base. 1