Challenges in implementing a knowledge base for software problem management

Software problem management plays an important role within support and maintenance process. Its main goal is to minimize the impact of problems on the business and to identify the root cause of problems. Unfortunately, many IT organizations have solely focused on reactive problem management and forgotten the benefits of proactive problem management. A knowledge base (KB) containing resolutions for known problems is an effective proactive method to decrease the number of problem reports sent by customers. In this paper, we present a results of a case study that identifies challenges in building a knowledge base system for software problem management. A DISER method (originally designed for building experience factories) is used as a research framework for the KB implementation.