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I completed a research paper on the knowledge management aspects of software industrialisation last year. This is not an original post, but a link to the paper – which IMO is not effectively SEO’d. Let’s see if this makes a difference. Here’s the link to reference the paper – http://hdl.handle.net/10019/2673.

And the abstract from the same location (with Americanized spelling):

This research utilizes theories of organizational knowledge creation from the field of knowledge management to analyze the manner in which the industrialization of the software development industry is likely to occur. The aim of the research is to prove the following hypothesis: If the software development industry moves towards industrialization, then knowledge assets in the format of universal production templates will come into being. The research commences by providing background information on the state of practise of software engineering by giving an overview of the changes in the industry over the past four decades. The software development industry is consequently presented from the viewpoint of the proponents of a craftsmanship based approach to software development, and from the viewpoint of those proposing that industrialization will offer a solution to the problems besetting the industry. In this discussion the terms industrialization as well as economies of scale and scope are defined. Potential paths and drivers that will allow the industrialization of the industry are presented – software factories as a path towards industrialization, and cloud computing as a driver for industrialization. In order to supply a knowledge management perspective, the theories of Ikujiro Nonaka and Max Boisot are presented. These theories assume different perspectives on the creation of organizational knowledge, but an attempt is made to reconcile the differences between the two theories. Particular attention is paid to the economic meaning and implications of knowledge, information and data as factors of production. The concept of knowledge assets are examined in detail, and placed into the context of software development. In the last chapter the research and conclusions of the previous chapters are consolidated, to prove the central hypothesis of this work.

The idea that software development will become an industrialized undertaking is hardly new, but considering the process from a knowledge management perspective was a new approach. Of particular interest to me was the realisation that we have only a very poor understanding of what knowledge really is – and we are merely at the beginning stages of creating structured frameworks for modeling the economic, semantic and social mechanisms and effects of knowledge creation.

The study of knowledge (a meta-study if ever there was one) may very well prove to be the unifying field of study, which is capable of bridging the gap between mathematics and the social sciences in a fundamental manner.