Facilitating the Practical Evaluation of Organizational Memories Using the Goal-Question-Metric Technique

It is an important industrial need to deliver high-quality knowledge-based systems and organizational memories (e.g., to support service management or knowledge management in general). Evaluation is required to ensure this high quality and guide the development and maintenance. We present an approach for facilitating practical evaluation of organizational memories that meets the requirements for good measurements in knowledge engineering. The base of this methodology is the Goal-Question-Metric (GQM) technique, which is an industrial-strength technique for goal-oriented measurement and evaluation from the field of software engineering. The practical benefit of GQM is demonstrated by a case study where GQM was applied to an existing case-based reasoning system/application.