SUPPORT FOR KNOWLEDGE AND INNOVATIONS IN
SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT
Community within Company: Inner Source Environment
Mirja Pulkkinen, Oleksiy Mazhelis
University of Jyväskylä, Information Technology Research Institute, PL 35, Finland – 40014
Pentti Marttiin, Jouni Meriluoto
Nokia Corporation
Keywords: Software development organization, Knowledge management, Community, Open Source Software, Inner
Source.
Abstract: This case study considers a software development support portal adapted from open source developer
communities into a company internal, so called inner-source development environment. With theoretical
insights into knowledge management (KM) models, recent advancements in KM theory building, and
observations of the inner source platform we make observations as regarding the KM approach and
suggestions for its further development. Both technological and human components of KM are considered.
The results of this study, can be generally applicable to the knowledge creation and innovation support in
software development. We believe that many software companies are following the example and building
virtual environments to support the knowledge processes and innovation in their activities. The case
company, Nokia, is a pioneer in KM efforts for the software organization.
1 INTRODUCTION
The capital that a software organization is exploiting
in its production process is for the major part
intellectual. Software development organizations are
utmost knowledge intensive, and this is why
investments into knowledge management (KM) e.g.
by creating ecologies for innovation have a
significant role in the development and renewal of
the software organizations. The advancements in
knowledge management research are therefore
attentively followed and applied in leading software
organizations. This study aims to add as an
interpretive case study (Guo and Sheffield 2006) to
the body of knowledge on KM for an increased
understanding of the variegated dimensions of
organizational activities. The focus of the study is
inner source, which means facilitating a web
community within an enterprise. This setting
exploits the knowledge creation dynamics of a
virtual community for commercial software
development.
1.1 Nokia
Software development represents a significant
portion of the research and development activities
undertaken in our case company Nokia. Therefore, it
could be seen as a software development
organization. Nokia has gained recognition of its
exemplary role as a front line organization to adapt
KM practices (Goh 2004, see also “Entovation”.
www.entovation.com/whatsnew/knowledge-
economy.htm or “The KNOW Network”
www.knowledgebusiness.com). The company
developed and deployed a framework for
organizational knowledge creation and management
in late 1990’s (Känsälä 2000). The SECI model of
knowledge creation (Nonaka 1994) was generally
the framework of reference for the early adopters of
KM. With further findings of the contemporaries,
and company’s own R&D, it was influential for the
conceptualization of related issues also at Nokia.
However well known the theoretical KM
concepts were, specific at Nokia was the pragmatic
141
Pulkkinen M., Mazhelis O., Marttiin P. and Meriluoto J. (2007).
SUPPORT FOR KNOWLEDGE AND INNOVATIONS IN SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT - Community within Company: Inner Source Environment.
In Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Web Information Systems and Technologies - Society, e-Business and e-Government /
e-Learning, pages 141-150
DOI: 10.5220/0001280501410150
Copyright
c
 SciTePress

approach taken to the KM thus avoiding the problem
of bringing burdening extras to the actual work
processes and embedding KM into the software
development processes, guiding methods and
practices (see e.g. Pöyry et al. 2005). This made KM
at Nokia “seaworthy”. Further insights into
knowledge management were brought up later,
taking into account the human component of KM
and stakeholder involvement to the ongoing
development of the KM environment at (Meriluoto
2003). There may be several factors contributing to
Nokia’s excellence in knowledge management (Goh
2004) but the underlying scientific work with which
the practices have been nurtured cannot be without
influence.
1.2 New Challenges
The business environment is changing fast. Business
models, methods and practices of the software
developer companies are challenged firstly, by the
open source software development that have shown
the power of communities working in virtual
environments and joining forces around the globe.
Secondly, the ultimately short time-to-market of e.g.
new e-services, with arising new requirements to
client systems and device operating systems demand
from the system developers a swiftly acting and
reacting software organization. Further, the agile
software development methods set new requirements
to the software development (SWD) organization.
Their aim is not only to limit the development time
but also to tackle the everlasting problems of end-
user involvement (Abrahamsson et al., 2003).
Nokia has been one of the first ones to realize the
challenge and the potential that open source software
communities present to the software business, both
in interaction with the open source community (cf.
www.maemo.org) and in experimenting with a
similar methodology within company, creating an
inner-source SWD environment (Dinkelacker et al.
2002). Since the introduction of interactive services
on wide area networks, potential of the immediate
involvement of the customers and business partners
as a resource in both new product development and
quality management has been exploited (Armstrong
and Hegal 1997, Finch 1999, Hippel 2002). In the
SW product creation process these stakeholders are
to be included in the virtual environment supporting
SWD. Network centric software product
development has been discussed as an overall
approach (Mazhelis, Pulkkinen & Vikman 2006),
presenting, however, more challenges than solutions.
Facing all these factors a need to review the KM
approach of SW development at Nokia arises, while
product creation can be solved easier, even in
networks (Meriluoto et al. 2004) . In this study, we
are looking at a support service for software
development, the Nokia iSource portal that is
founded on an open source software community tool
(the free version of SourceForge software). It is used
as Nokia “bazaar” for a variety or projects. It was
first adopted by innovative research projects but
currently business projects utilize its version control
tools (CVS and Subversion). This study considers
the support the inner source SWD. Before discussing
the tool, theoretical issues for the evaluation of the
virtual environment are discussed.
2 THEORETICAL ADVANCES
Backed up with a rich base of KM literature, two
models or approaches are presented in a knowledge
management framework (Malhotra 2000):
 Information processing, meaning systems to
support the optimized use of information and
the knowledge as its interpretation in the
activities of an organization.
 Sense-making allowing for flexible,
exploratory and experimental use of
information for creative use of it and for
enabling novel solutions and innovation to
emerge.
The elements considered for the two models are
i) the strategies for business and technology, ii)
organizational or administrative control, iii) the
culture for sharing information (or constructing
objective knowledge), iv) the representations used
for this, v) the organizational structures and vi)
managing styles (Malhotra 2004).The constraints or
the enablers of these factors are in the Model 1:
i. Pre-definition of outcomes as strategy
ii. Control for consistency
iii. Information sharing based upon
contracts
iv. Static and Pre-specified knowledge
v. Insular and Top-Down organization
vi. Managing for achieving compliance
Although the author presents Model 1 as leading
to decreasing returns, in some settings, for periods of
moderate change, this may be the reasonable model.
Knowledge management systems (KMS) design
emerges from this thinking. If novel products and
designs are the major source for incomes, and in
periods of rapid organizational change, Model 2 may
be the preferable one. The elements of Model 2 are
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i. “Re-everything” (re-engineer, re-
design) as strategy
ii. Self-control for creativity
iii. Information sharing based upon trust
iv. Dynamic and constructed knowledge
v. Inclusive and self-organized
organization
vi. Managing for achieving commitment
A goal of the case company is rapid development
of services software and devices with embedded
software, so Model 2 seems to be the more
promising for the case and will be tested in this
study. From the characteristics of the elements for
Model 2, it is apparent that human factors are
cogent.
In KM literature, an emphasis on people related
issues seems to gain attention. Knowledge is widely
seen as a concept that cannot be separated from
human behavior (Davenport and Prusak 1998, Maier
et al 2005, Smith and McLaughlin 2004) or is
intrinsically human behavior (Alveson and
Kärreman 2001). In accordance, Malhotra (2004)
points that knowledge is active (presuming human
action), affective (presuming human emotive
behavior) and dynamic: Involving human
interpretation, and an on-going re-interpretation of
data or information. Any machine intelligence
presupposes human pre-programming of
interpretations of inputs and processing rules;
interpretation of data and information can be done
only by humans. This we see as the field of KM
systems (KMS).
For a focus on creativity, Goh (2004) is
suggesting “knowledge innovation” (KI) that is
derived from knowledge and innovation
management thinking (cf. Tushman and Anderson
1997) and seen as opposed to the more technology
(KMS) related knowledge management principles.
KI means in the view of Goh merging innovation
management aspects with knowledge management
practices. The KI is organized around the concepts i)
innovation value systems, ii) collaborative
knowledge strategy, iii) strategic knowledge
networks, iv) hybrid human-technology KM
solutions and v) bottom-up knowledge processes.
The target is customer success as opposed to the
narrower (monetary) value for customers.
The value of communities (communities of
practice or of knowing, thought communities, Tuomi
2000) has been a cornerstone of KM research.
Communities have the power to amplify the
potential of individuals for knowledge processing
and creating. Information and communication
technologies enable virtual teams, communities and
collaborative environments across the globe but can
be used to support also co-located teams in
information storage, processing and retrieval making
them more powerful for knowledge work. For
commercial organizations regardless the industry,
the power of communities is harnessed most often
for KM purposes. The European Forum of Quality
Management reports March 2002: 74% of
knowledge leaders rely on CoP’s in a survey in 27
companies, 41% of which employ >10 000 people.
The CoPs have become crucial especially to
extended enterprises (Meriluoto 2003:2).
The strength of the open source software (OSS)
development is organization as virtual communities
around an activity. Achieving the human
motivational factors inherent in self-organizing
communities remains a challenge within commercial
software development organizations. For a
commercial setting the challenge is to sustain the
good motivation.
2.1 Three Types of Organizational
Processes
For the elaboration of factors significant for KM,
and especially the human related factors, a profound
understanding of organizational processes is a good
starting point. In a meta-study on organizational
processes that explores the process knowledge of
multiple disciplines, the processes in an organization
fall into three major categories: the work processes,
the behavioral processes and the change processes
(Garvin, 1998). The problematics of software
engineering and its tool support can be viewed in the
light of these process categories.
The work processes are the part of the activities
that can be manipulated. A work environment for
rich knowledge storing, retrieving and processing as
well as features and platforms for communication,
information sharing and exchange can be set up. A
learning before and during a task (Ghalib 2004) are
parts of the information processing line of
knowledge management, the KM environment for
work (in accordance with concepts like on-demand
learning and support for knowledge work). This
means the single-loop learning (Argyris and Schön
1978) for optimizing within a current paradigm
(Malhotra 2000). Defined work processes, for SWD
presented in methodologies and SE models, are used
as reference models.
However, the behavioral processes take place
according to the motivations, incentives, rewards
and disincentives for humans in a social (work)
setting. The social aspect of work provides diverse
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motivational factors directing human behavior both
as individuals and as groups. The managerial actions
here foster and facilitate rich access to knowledge
and allow for learning after a task (Ghalib 2004)
meaning a reflection on one’s own actions and
incorporating the new knowledge. This means
looking for renewal of practices and creation of
better solutions. A possibility of double loop
learning (Argyris and Schön 1978) or making sense
in an undefined situation (Malhotra 2000) can be
seen possible if the behavioral processes head
towards gaining deeper knowledge and creating
understanding of the unknown.
In any case, organizational change processes are
taking place: no organization remains the same over
time. Garvin mentions innovation as one of the
change processes. Innovation is one of the goals in
the KM efforts. To induce a desired change, the
setting up of the work environment and definition of
the work processes, the roles and resources for them
are the first managerial task. As important is
however, to set up a motivational environment with
reward systems and incentives that direct the actions
of individuals towards enrichment and renewal of
both individual and the organizational knowledge.
Organization, management and motivation
theories provide a rich prism through which to
examine the behavioral and change processes. The
scope of the study does not allow for elaboration of
all these, but we would like to point to the
communities mentioned above, and the motivational
issues that guide the behavioral processes further
leading to change processes.
In OSS communities, the voluntary participation
relies on the assumption that for many developers
the desire to build their reputation and maintain it
provides a strong motivation for a long-term
engagement in the development. Further, the sense
of belonging: membership in a community; respect
by peers, possibility for promotion in the community
and in general achievement and contribution to a
whole are motivational factors resulting to
productivity in an OSS community. Affiliation,
achievement and power have been established as the
main motivational components in work situations
(McClelland 1961). Further, challenges, task
autonomy, intrinsic interests and creative
opportunities (Herzberg 2003) are driving factors in
an OSS community type work environment as well
as expert organization principles (Drucker 2006).
Similar suggestions are made by Bahrami and Evans
(2005) based on Silicon Valley studies for
knowledge work management. Perceived fairness
(Kim and Mauborgne 1997) is further a strong
motive for behavior. Studies on individual and
organizational motivation factors are summarized in
(Rossi and Bonaccorsi, 2005).
Inner source idea is driven by the attractive
results in open-source communities: faster releases
(publish early and often), making the process
transparent for developers and users / customers, and
utilizing a (large) community to detect faults
quickly. Increased quality and quick promotion of
novel product ideas are believed to be due to the
involvement and collaborative efforts of the
developers and the reuse of their knowledge (Krogh
et al. 2005). It is readily admitted that not all
practices are straightforwardly implemented in the
context of enterprises. For example, OS licensing,
“coordination afterwards” principle, or distribution
of control are challenging enterprises.
The open-source principles adopted in inner
source include making the source code freely
available for other developers to view, comment,
use, and create new versions, though within the
boundaries of the corporation and possibly business
partners. From a practical perspective, this implies
that several problems faced by individual developers
need to be addressed, such as exchanging the
information about the ongoing work within the
community (i.e. acquainting with the work of others
and advertising one’s own), and identifying, locating
and accessing the available software assets like
architecture constructs, design components, or code.
Services like web portals provide support for these
activities of software engineers.
2.2 Systems Supporting
Communities
Variegated tools to support knowledge management
activities have been developed for the software
development environment. Despite the concept of
knowledge management system (KMS, Maier 2004)
no single system can meet all the needs for KM
support in any organization (Maier et al. 2005,
Malhotra 2004). The two models (Malhotra 2000
and 2004) and the two approaches (Goh 2004)
suggest that for creative work and support of
innovation, the tools are only a partial answer.
However, especially in distributed development
environments, and also for enhancing the knowledge
work in co-located SWD, the virtual environments
created as information and communication platforms
are significant and amplify the human and
organisational memory, communication and
collaboration. To understand what, where and how
to support, we look at the knowledge life cycle
which gives a possibility to follow the evolving
information and knowledge inputs.
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2.3 Knowledge Life Cycle Models
Looking at the knowledge in the activities of
organizations could give some insights for
considering how to organize the software
development work. To our view, the Model 1, or
information processing guides the concrete
organization of work and the defining of work
processes, their phases, task deliverables etc. The
organizational culture and climate, the unofficial
organization (a network of social relationships and
hidden power relations, highly influenced by
personal characteristics of members) live in the
behavioral processes of all participants. These
cannot be dictated but influenced by managerial
actions. The Model 2 sense making (Malhotra 2000
and 2004) or knowledge innovation (Goh 2004) are
needed to take this into account.
The knowledge life cycle process models focus
on the knowledge itself, not the individuals and
groups of people what the SECI model does
Table 1: Knowledge life cycle models: 8 phases.
LC Phase Maier et al.
(2005)
(Ghalib
2004)
1. Creation and
identification
Create,
identify
Identification
of knowledge
2. Encoding and
externalization
Formalize,
organize
Capture of the
newly created
knowledge +
analysis
3. Make accessible
Share,
distribute
4. Validation
Validation
5. Evolution
Refine Distillation
6. Individual use
Apply Embedding
into business
processes
7. Institutio-
nalization; use
organization-wide
Application to
business
activities
8. Feedback ->
return to phase 1
Feedback
The SECI model has found use in the
presentation of practical work in managing
knowledge (Känsälä 2000, Meriluoto 2003). Some
new aspects might be won with the knowledge life
cycle models, keeping in mind the significance of
the two KM models. For the analysis of the iSource
service, we take models of knowledge life cycle by
Maier et al. (2005) and Ghalib (2004). By
combining the two life-cycle models, a total of eight
distinct phases can be distinguished (See Table 1).
These phases are embedded in the organizational
processes. To our view, both work and behavioral
processes are needed to carry on the evolving of
knowledge throughout these phases. Knowledge has
the property of increasing in use, so fostering
knowledge creation and enrichment could take into
account these phases, and provide support and
possibilities for diffusion and amplification of it.
3 CASE ISOURCE
For initial results of the inner source experiment, we
conducted a case study (Yin 1994) at a Nokia unit
providing and developing internal services for
business units. Participatory observation was used
for the collecting of evidence. This section presents
the gathered experiences with Inner Source portal
called iSource, and more generally with the idea of
adopting practices of the open source communities
within a corporation (Dinkelacker et al. 2002,
Theunissen et al. 2002).
A free version of SourceForge (sourceforge.net)
was customized and introduced to test and
demonstrate the inner source concept. iSource was
introduced as a portal, to provide the availability and
openness for sharing software assets between
different business units. Similarly to its ancestor
SourceForge, iSource provides a set of tools for
collaborative software development. These tools
address the practical problems of exchanging the
information about the ongoing work within the
community and locating or accessing the available
assets. iSource portal is integrated to local user and
group management infrastructure and it also allows
company staff to access the portal over an extranet.
The introduction of iSource has been undertaken
in three phases so far.
 The trial phase (2001-2002). iSource was
piloted with few projects that provided
feedback for the portal customization. No
global service is built yet, but a special
support group took the server hosting.
 Adoption among research projects (2002-2005).
Active deployment into research projects
raised the interest and management decisions
to use iSource. For example, projects that
conducted following Mobile Internet
Technical Architecture (Nokia 2002) started to
use iSource. The amount of users when
reaching the limits of the research
organization. A global service is built, and a
service level agreement for iSource was made.
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 Adoption among business projects (2005-
2006). Business interest is arising due to the
investments into security and SCM services.
There was a huge increase in the number of
users and business projects. At present, user
base of iSource amounts for few thousands of
“members”, i.e. employees of either Nokia or
collaborating companies, 70% of them from
business groups.
iSource aims to give means to tackle the
common challenges of large companies: efficient
reuse and cost-effective re-cultivation of software.
However, the most advances, e.g. personal
efficiency, utilization of agile models and available
experiences of “de facto” tools, are related to the
SCM tools: CVS and Subversion.
4 ANALYSIS
In this subsection, we analyse the iSource service
and the tools provided by the service portal from the
two theoretical starting points presented above: i)
Knowledge life cycles, and ii) the human aspect of
KM, captured in organizational processes and the
management of them. Taking the more technical
analysis first, features of iSource taken from the
specification documents are compared with the
phases of the knowledge lifecycle to consider the
support of the knowledge processes.
In Table 2, we map the features to the phases of
the knowledge lifecycle model introduced above.
The mapping produced is a many-to-many mapping,
i.e. each phase of the lifecycle may be supported by
more than one feature of iSource, and a feature of
iSource may provide support for several phases of
the lifecycle.
1. Identification of knowledge. In this phase, the
iSource’s service helps to browse or search the
available information (or encoded knowledge) on a
specific topic. Creation of knowledge involves
combination of existing pieces of information or
knowledge with human intelligence. The search
facilities of iSource offer the possibility to locate
relevant projects based on keywords, browsing
request information through mail-lists and forums.
Besides, new releases of projects, and code snippets
are available for browsing.
2. Encoding and externalization. The support in
this phase mainly covers the activities related to
project documentation: i) trove categorization is
helpful in categorizing a newly created project so
that it would be easy for others to locate it; ii)
project templates provide a framework guiding
project teams in externalizing and encoding the
knowledge acquainted during the project work; iii)
CVS facilitates concurrent development and enables
the tracking of the historical development of the
encoded knowledge. Besides, there are memory
helps like bookmarks.
Table 2: KLC support in iSource environment.
LC Phase Provisions in iSource
Creation and
identification
Search facilities,
Asking/browsing mail-
lists, forums, Browsing
Software Map, or New
releases, Browsing
code snippets
Encoding and
externalization
Project templates,
Trove (project)
categorization, CVS,
Bookmarks
Make accessible
News, Mailing lists,
Forums and
discussions, Code
snippets, Project
documentation
Validation
(Visibility of element
usage), Discussions
and other distribution
of experienced quality
Evolution
News, Mailing lists,
Forums and discussion
forums, Code snippets,
Project documentation
Individual use
Search facilities,
Asking/browsing mail-
lists, forums, Browsing
Software Map, or New
releases, Browsing
code snippets
Bookmarks
Institutionalization
(Use organization
wide)
Project templates
Feedback -> return to
phase
Getting user statistics,
Peer ratings, Surveys
(per project), Quick
surveys (per user)
3. Making accessible (sharing, distributing).
iSource service as a whole can be seen as a tool for
knowledge sharing and distribution. Indeed, a
significant portion of its features represents
communication and collaboration that can be
employed for exchanging the knowledge among the
members of iSource community. These tools include
news, mailing lists, and (discussion) forums.
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Besides, the coders are provided with the possibility
to share potentially useful code snippets. Project
documentation, while not usually deemed as
collaboration tool, in fact provides a valuable
element of knowledge sharing.
4. Knowledge validation. No elements of
iSource appear to be directly supporting this
validation, if e.g. frequency of the use of a design or
other SW element is not seen as its (informal)
validation. User contributions in discussions etc.
naturally enable sharing of experience or evaluation
of designs.
5. Evolution (distillation, refinement). iSource
supports knowledge evolution by providing
communication facilities: developers can distil and
refine their knowledge as a result of communicating
with others and by browsing the available
information sources (encoded knowledge). The same
facilities as listed in phase 3 above, are useful in this
phase, too. The CVS may make some of the
evolution transparent.
6. Application on individual basis into single
processes. To an extent, also individual use of
knowledge is supported in the searching and
browsing facilities. However, individuals on their
own rather use other tools like software development
kits.
7. Institutionalization. (Broad application and
incorporation into organizational processes) The
project templates may be a step towards
institutionalizing the knowledge embedded in them.
8. Feedback (Giving input to phase 1). The user
of iSource may (voluntarily) participate in peer
ratings, whereby the user can rate others and be
rated by the others. This facility may be useful in
assessing the “quality” (correctness, appropriateness,
timeliness, etc.) of the knowledge that the user
shares with the members of the iSource community.
This kind of feedback, if not edited, could have
unintended side effects.
Besides, for the entire iSource service, user
statistics can be used to assess the usefulness of the
service as a whole. These features have, however,
not found real use in our case yet. In a company
there is a threshold in using the service this way.
As could be seen in Table 2, the features of
iSource encompass documentation templates, reuse
support tools, tools for communication and
collaboration in content creation, documentation and
tracking tools, feedback provision tools and tools
supporting reputation building, among other
features. Many of these features support
simultaneously several phases of the knowledge
lifecycle. If no support is provided in the portal, to
an extent, this is due to the availability of other tools
outside of iSource (such as modelling tools, software
development kits, emulators, etc.) to support the
activities in these phases.
Features automating support for knowledge
processing might be a possibility to add new features
(agent technology). Further extensions can be
envisioned for each of these categories, e.g.:
 Documentation support – semi-automatic
extraction of relevant pieces of text from inter-
personal communication, e.g. about decision
justification;
 Reuse support – extension of code snippet
library to include other reusable assets, e.g.
reusable architectural elements, use cases, test
cases, etc.; tools for recognition of
patterns/idioms in code snippets, (agent
technology);
 Communication tools – instant messaging or
chat communication, audio-communication
(VoIP), etc. for online collaboration;
 Collaboration in content creation – wiki-like
tool for evolving content collaboratively;
 Feedback – surveys extension to include also
feedback by the customers or end-users, etc.
 Other software development tools (c.f. Eclipse
plug-ins)
The integration of these tools depends on the
development of open source portals (e.g. GForge),
and local iSource needs and priorities. However, the
long term goal of iSource is to separate “own
customization” with interfaces to a commodity
portal software and thus lower the development and
maintenance costs.
5 DISCUSSION
The adoption rate of the (voluntary) adoption of an
inner source tool shows that the inner source idea
does have support. An open source community
portal in intra-organizational, commercial software
development provides a platform for knowledge
processes. Direct conclusions as regards to the
profitability of iSource cannot be made at this point.
However, it is supporting rather the Model 2, or
sense-making knowledge management, relying on
the behavioral processes of both individuals and
groups of people. This setting has an indirect impact
to the productivity, so the promise is a long term
improvement by creating a fertile environment for
knowledge sharing, elaboration and innovation.
Considering iSource against the Model 2 KM,
sense-making, or the similar knowledge innovation
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(KI) following points can be made: As such, the
dynamics of an open source software development
community cannot be transferred into a company.
An OSS type portal provides support for the
knowledge work at several phases of the knowledge
life cycle, but does not suffice to induce a change
process towards a novel organizational culture.
However, copying the concept of a virtual
environment and providing support for a community
implements some elements (See section 2) of KM
Model 2 that help to support the transformation of
the software development organization into a more
knowledge management and innovation intensive
one.
“Support for ‘re-everything” (i) would mean that
the defined work processes in the software
development are revised as to ensure that e.g. the
prescribed order of work is not blocking the
behavioral processes leading to knowledge creation,
accumulation and a desired transfer of knowledge.
This is to the most part an issue of process definition
and process improvement, which can be reflected in
the support. The iSource environment gives
possibility to variations and does not as such fix any
process models or provide any automated work
processes. Some of the tool features could be
harnessed to process improvement measuring if seen
profitable. Iterative work is supported by e.g. CVS,
and the retention facilities in general. A related issue
is the “Self-Control for creativity” (ii), which can be
supported by the tool by providing e.g. individual
performance transparency (contributions as reusable
assets, troves etc.) giving fairness to rewards.
The third element, information sharing culture
based on trust (iii) can be enhanced through the
transparency possible in a service like iSource. If the
tool manages to create a transparent way to share
knowledge it might succeed in enhancing the
contributions to the whole community through
individual and organizational learning. This also
relates back to the previous element, self-control.
The transparency of contributions might be able
to enhance the exchange and collaboration instead of
striving for immediate rewards for individuals and
keeping the information for oneself. However,
reward structures play a role here. Communities and
OSS communities in special have shown that
immaterial rewards as motivational factors can out-
rule material rewards. The existing other (material)
reward systems in a company may, however nullify
the enhancing effect the community environment
might have to performance.
The next element, knowledge representations
being “Dynamic and Constructed” (iv) is also related
to interpersonal exchange. Knowledge cannot be
fully captured but resides in the behavioral
processes. However, a flexible support environment
facilitates also dynamic representations. In iSource,
the file formats are not pre-defined. The
organization structure is not created by the tool.
Representations may even emerge in the tool use.
Model 2 suggests “Inclusive and Self-
Organized” organization structures (v). The support
environment provides a platform that does not
exclude moving towards inclusion and self-
organizing teams, but this will require managerial
decisions and guidance. As to the “Achieving
Commitment” (vi) as the mode of management, it
has to be stated that this cannot be solved with a tool
but like with other elements, a supporting
environment can be an enabling factor if the
management is to be moved towards more self-
directed actions and autonomy of company
members. Finally, the work could be organised on
the systems “ecology”.
Maybe the most sensitive issue in this is fairness.
A virtual environment can provide the transparency
needed towards self-directed, self-organized and
committed motivation and work, which enhances the
creation of knowledge and the amplification of it in
collaborative settings. For knowledge processes, the
immaterial environment like culture and managerial
attitudes are influential. iSource seems promising
platform in the developments in this area.
To the KMS and knowledge engineering point of
view, as the pre-analysis against knowledge life-
cycle models showed, there might be room for some
more support by automated functionalities.
6 CONCLUSIONS
With initial experiences of the use of iSource, an
inner-source software development (SWD) portal
service in use at Nokia and some recent insights in
knowledge management (KM) theory building we
make suggestions to an improved SWD organization
knowledge management approach. We reflect the
iSource experiences on two KM models, and for the
case consider the so-called Model 2, supported by a
knowledge innovation (KI) concept. An
understanding of organizational processes helps in
understanding these models. Work processes (SW
process and sub-processes) can be supported more
directly by tool features and Model 1 KM ideas. The
Model 2 KM supports the human component,
emphasizing the behavioral processes in KM. For
the behavioral processes of learning and knowledge
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renewal to innovations, the support is more indirect
and subtle and needs also other managerial actions
besides providing supporting tools.
The iSource portal benefits company as a
“bazaar” supporting individual projects globally
Nokia wide, although Inner Source practices are
weakly supported. Even though the implementation
of Inner Source practices would not provide
productivity and performance leaps, they most likely
are step into the right direction. Our considerations
are that positive developments are likely to take
place if some managerial concerns influencing the
behavioral processes would abide the service portal
implementation. These are mostly related to reward
structures, taking into account both material (money)
and immaterial rewards (like recognition, support,
achievement etc.). Perceived fairness can be
achieved by a virtual environment providing
transparency to the community and the members and
the contributions and resource investments.
Knowledge is created, enriched, cumulated and
shared in both personal and interpersonal behavioral
processes. A support environment can be beneficial
for these processes: it can provide access to rich
knowledge, capabilities to search, retrieve, process
information for efficient work and novel
combinations. However, the supporting systems can
only provide a “scaffold” for the processes.
Numerous factors in organizational culture, climate
and managerial actions influence and direct these
processes. Individual factors like intrinsic
motivations add to the decisions made by an
individual. However, behavior in an organisation is
mostly social.
Another issue from the KM literature focusing
on KMS, the knowledge life cycle, is giving
background for an analysis of the functionalities of
the tool as a KMS. This analysis also confirms the
benefits iSource can bring to the SWD organization.
It also points to further possibilities to automate the
processing of externalized knowledge in digitalized
retention facilities.
As has been pointed out (Behlendorf 2005,
Mazhelis et al. 2006), project is a predominant
concept in the software business, in organizing
work, resources use, assets creation, reward systems,
motivation, leadership, and commitment. Project is
also the basic concept in the SourceForge and
iSource environment. The software community as a
whole faces now a need to reconsider the project
paradigm, to be able to make progress with KM
issues and tool support. As a legacy from the open
source community, “project” is the major concept
around which the iSource tool is ontologically
organized.
Due to all the positive organizational and
motivational factors the project paradigm is
providing for organizing software development
work, it is not feasible to suggest abandoning it.
Instead, it is possible to find ways to go around the
perceived problems of lacking continuity by
supporting the knowledge processes from project to
project. The current efforts in SWD processes
expressed as software engineering methodologies
(agile, XP) seem to be heading to the same direction
pointed out in this study, emphasizing human
involvement both from user and developer sides.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This research stems from the E!2023 ITEA COSI
project and the MODPA project at the University of
Jyväskylä, that was funded by the Finnish Funding
Agency for Technology and Innovation.
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