Tool Support for Experience-based Software Development Methodologies

Experience-based approaches to software development promise to capture critical knowledge from software projects that can be used as a basis for continuous improvement of software development practices. Putting these ideas into practice in the quickly evolving discipline of software engineering has proven elusive. Techniques and tools are needed that help software practitioners apply past knowledge to current projects while engaging in knowledge creation processes. This paper outlines the experience factory and organizational learning approaches, both of which explore how experience-based approaches to software development can be used to improve software development practices. A software tool is used to investigate how these two approaches can be integrated to create an approach that addresses many issues of knowledge management in the software engineering field.