Toward a Customer Knowledge Management Model for Enhancing Enterprise Software Quality

Many previous research studies on software quality enhancement have only focused on the technical aspects of software quality, such as reliability, maintainability and functionality. However, the nature of enterprise software requires additional focus on transferring and integration of customer knowledge, for customization, enhancement, maintenance and training. As customers are seen as one of the most important stakeholders in software projects, it would appear that the current use of customer knowledge in software development is insufficient. This study concentrates on investigating Human, Organizational and Technological factors of customer knowledge management (CKM) in order to enhance the quality of enterprise software within software companies. After investigating CKM factors in the literature, a Technique for the Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) was used to rank these factors regarding the importance of CKM development in enterprise software companies, in order to improve software product quality. The weight and priority of the factors were determined by 31 software development company experts. Based on the highest priority factors, a theoretical model was developed. This study proposes a fundamental model that can be used as a guideline for successful CKM applications, within enterprise software development companies, to improve software quality.