Knowledge Management process activities identified in the organization
Identification
Mapping internal and external knowledge	The company maintains a record of the main areas of knowledge related to its set of core competencies, as well as an updated record of employee resumes.
Identification of knowledge flow	The flow of knowledge is mainly reflected in organizational processes, especially concerning the system development process. There is no integrated view of this flow.
Knowledge gaps identification	Knowledge gaps are identified at the operational level of the organization and it is usually up to the sector manager in collaboration with team members to identify these gaps.
Mapping of projects	It occurs at the national level. The company maps all the ongoing projects distributed across its various units. This helps in determining the direction of new projects and reallocating projects and people between sectors. At the operational level, this contributes to the exchange of knowledge and resolution of problems related to ongoing projects.
Visibility of employees and structures	The visibility of employees and structures is present in the organization. There is an information system that catalogs functions identify employees and their respective allocations in sectors that make up the organizational structure.
Understand the knowledge environment	The understanding of the organizational knowledge environment can be identified at all levels of the organization (strategic, tactical, and operational). At the strategic level, this understanding is reviewed at each new planning cycle that includes actions aimed at knowledge management, with the participation of employees in its preparation.
Responsibilities and limits of access to information and knowledge	It occurs according to the information security policy implemented by the organization.
Construction and use of systems to support access to information and knowledge	Although there is no system specifically focused on knowledge management, the existing support systems, together, contribute to the improvement of this management process. An example is the system of appropriation of working hours, which supported the present study.
Development of knowledge search strategies	At the strategic level, the search for knowledge is planned more extensively, aiming to meet the strategic goals of the organization. The tactical level of production gives a technical direction to the strategic vision, and at the operational level, this vision is effectively implemented and adjusted to local knowledge needs.
Benchmarking	The organization participates annually in events and awards that benchmark the sector.
Mapping knowledge sources	There is an internal mapping of knowledge sources. However, external mapping is not performed systematically.
Construction of knowledge matrices	It was not possible to identify the existence of these matrices in the context of the organization.
Acquisition
Acquisition of courses	This acquisition occurs periodically, according to the demands and needs identified in each sector. Although the demands arise at the operational level, the recording and management of these activities are usually a responsibility at the tactical level.
External cooperation	There are external cooperation procedures regarding knowledge acquisition, mainly involving continuing education programs and cooperation between universities and the company, as described by Santos and Sampaio (2019) in (Garcia, Rapini, & Cário, 2018).
Internal training	Internal training occurs based on the knowledge needs previously identified and can be performed as directed by the board of the organization as well as at the local level involving one or more sectors. It can be performed in person or using distance learning resources.
Hiring specialists	The hiring of specialists can occur as needed and when this need is demonstrated.
Incorporation of knowledge	The incorporation of knowledge occurs mainly when new tools are acquired by the company. The acquisition of these tools usually requires training using external sources of knowledge.
Strategic alliances	During the study period, strategic alliances could not be identified.
Importing Stakeholder’s knowledge	The incorporation of knowledge of Stakeholders occurs at the time of acquisition of new software tools or hardware equipment, given that on these occasions it is necessary to acquire knowledge about the operation of these new components. However, a key source of Stakeholder’s knowledge is related to the interaction between development teams and business areas of the company, in the phases of system requirements elicitation from customers.
Development
Maintenance of knowledge development centers	The corporate university of the company can be considered as a knowledge development center, in that it encourages the process of continuous organizational learning, as well as fosters the development of this knowledge through internal events such as an annual conference that aims to reward innovative projects that arise from employee initiatives, with or without the participation of components external to the organization.
Knowledge development policies	There is an organizational knowledge development policy, which results in partnerships between universities and the company and continuing education actions to support the individual development of employees, encouraging participation in undergraduate and graduate programs and foreign language learning.
Externalization of tacit knowledge actions	The externalization of tacit knowledge occurs both in annual conferences and in internal training actions. They can also be identified in the transfer of systems and projects carried out between sectors or in the publication of term papers for undergraduate and graduate programs conducted with the support of the company.
Application of systematic problem-solving methods	There is no specific methodology or standard problem-solving model adopted by the company. Such initiatives are dependent on local actions that can be observed in the organization’s sectors.
Encouraging research and development	The creation of a specific sector focused on research and development can be identified during the study period.
External and intra-organizational cooperation	External cooperation occurs mainly with universities and results in the support of specific projects or courses for employees when these courses offer knowledge categories that are strategic for the company.
Conciliation of individual and collective goals of knowledge development	This conciliation is encouraged at the strategic level, seeking the participation of employees in the preparation of the strategic plan of the company, considering that such participation will provide a better understanding of the company guidelines and consequently a greater engagement in the execution of this strategy by the employees.
Knowledge creation through daily and routine work actions	This construction occurs and is directly linked to the application of individual knowledge in work activities. This can be considered one of the main activities of the process of knowledge creation and diffusion, considering that it represents the real transformation of the information acquired at the personal level into knowledge, through the performance of the work activities of the projects.
Encouraging the exchange and dissemination of knowledge	Incentives for the exchange and dissemination of knowledge occur at the three levels of decision-making and are implemented in several initiatives. At the operational level, it occurs mainly in the interactions of team members during the execution of projects to solve problems and discuss solution methods, by a direct initiative of the teams and leaders. However, at the tactical and strategic levels, this incentive can also be observed. The holding of annual conferences with the presentation of employee work involving solutions to problems and proposals for innovation is an example.
Integration and communication policies	There is a formal communication policy that helps in the integration process. However, there is no institutional integration policy.
Incentives for creativity	The incentives for creativity are more directly related to what was described in the item referring to the incentive to exchange and disseminate knowledge.
Sharing
Conducting team activities and activities between teams	The performance of activities in teams and between teams is the common practice of the organization. Projects are usually carried out in teams and many are carried out collaboratively between teams that sometimes belong to units from another state. In addition, given that in the period considered for the study there was a formal software development process, based on the CMMI proposal, the application of this process necessarily implied interaction between teams to meet the various requirements of the process, such as peer reviews, testing, and quality audits, for example.
Space management and proximity of teams	Space management is deliberately performed, considering in most cases the proximity of teams working on projects that serve the same client, dealing with the same topic, or in projects shared between teams, to facilitate communication and the exchange of knowledge.
Information Security and Confidentiality Policies	There is formal security, confidentiality, and privacy policy in the organization that covers the three organizational layers: strategic, tactical, and operational.
Organizational structures that facilitate knowledge exchange	The organizational structure is established to facilitate communication between levels and adopts the balanced matrix model described in [1] .
Deliberate the creation of knowledge redundancy to facilitate its exchange and retention	Redundancy occurs mainly through knowledge sharing involving at least two people who become responsible for conducting projects. This practice contributes to both knowledge sharing and retention, given that it creates alternatives in the case of eventual absences of one of the people responsible for the projects.
Organizational communication policy that facilitates knowledge exchange.	There is a formal communication policy that helps in the knowledge-sharing process.
Reproduction of knowledge	Reproduction occurs mainly when there is a need to carry out projects, either within the teams or between teams.
Building knowledge networks	The knowledge networks could be identified, and their structure and behavior from the point of view of knowledge creation and diffusion were addressed [21] .
Socialization of knowledge	The process of socialization of knowledge can be identified, but in most cases, it does not occur exactly as suggested by [6] and [4] , considering that socialization without verbalization or the use of other means of externalization is more difficult to implement, especially in environments where intellectual work is performed in a workstation in which each employee develops their work individually.
Professional training	Professional training is often performed in the organization in a planned manner and according to the knowledge demands determined from the identification of existing knowledge gaps.
Use
Development of knowledge on the job	It occurs either through formal training or through the transfer of knowledge in special sections or through the exchange of knowledge between team members to the extent that there is a need to share this knowledge during project development.
Administration of the time of application of the knowledge acquired in training	There is no formal process for measuring the time of knowledge application.
Knowledge demands from other areas	These requests occur on demand, to the extent that there is a need to seek knowledge that is necessary for the execution of the projects and that is not locally available.
Information and knowledge availability	The availability is visible both regarding the documentation and concerning the access to the employees who may have the required knowledge.
Adoption of physical structures that facilitate knowledge exchange	The arrangement of the sectors facilitates communication and knowledge exchange. However, sometimes interactions between teams can generate noise that breaks the concentration of other employees not involved in the issues addressed.
Adoption of technologies that facilitate the exchange of knowledge	The company seeks to update communication tools to facilitate the exchange of knowledge, either through the use of software such as collaborative tools or by conducting audio conferences and videoconferences to exchange knowledge.
Communication media that facilitates knowledge absorption	The company encouraged the creation of collaborative virtual spaces such as internal social networks, the use of the intranet, and internal communication software.
Retention
Select the knowledge to retain	Most of the knowledge necessary to perform the work that must be retained corresponds to the knowledge related to the requirements of the built systems. However, there is an important part regarding the problems that occurred during the execution of the projects and implementation of the code, which can be lost if it is not recorded in the lessons learned normally consolidated at the end of the projects.
Store knowledge	The knowledge storage process occurs mainly during all phases where documentation is needed. These documentation activities occur mainly during the requirements gathering phase but are not restricted to it, involving also the phases corresponding to test planning, quality reporting, and activities related to software configuration.
Update knowledge	The updating of knowledge is an important activity that is present throughout the life cycle of the developed software, considering that eventual changes in the requirements require that all the documentation evolves together with the code. This may involve all steps and activities that require recording and documentation and that are impacted by changes in requirements.
Identify key employees	The identification of key employees is performed at the operational level, usually by the managers, and is an activity that is directly associated with the deliberate creation of redundancies to avoid loss of knowledge.
Building and using document management systems	Although a document management system was not used during the study period, the documentation of the entire development process was performed and versioned in a standard official tool adopted by the organization.
Incentive and motivation policies to retain knowledge	The policies and models of knowledge management and process management related to software development stimulate the retention of knowledge, insofar as they indicate ways to share and retain this knowledge mainly through the application of the guidelines of the adopted models.
Systematic transfer of skills	The systematic transfer of skills is usually encouraged in the organization by the leaders of each team.
Selective explanation interviews in the demission process	No policy determines the performance of selective explanation interviews during the dismissal process of the company, as suggested by [24] .
Use of shared language on organizational knowledge topics	The existence of a shared language on organizational knowledge topics was performed using all the tools and official means of communication available during the study period and was supported mainly by the standardization of processes and the adoption of a formal process model of the software development process.
Lessons learned to record	The recording of lessons learned is a practice adopted by the organization and was provided for in the development process management model itself.