Evaluating a pattern approach as an aid for the development of organisational knowledge: An empirical study

Abstract

Patterns are a powerful paradigm that has emerged in recent years as a mechanism that can help towards the consolidation and dissemination of design experiences. In the context of the European research project ELEKTRA we developed a pattern approach for capturing best business practices of change management in the electricity sector. In this paper we briefly present this approach and concentrate on the issue of validating the pattern approach through evaluation of its different features. In particular, we define three constituent features, namely the knowledge contained in patterns, the language used to construct patterns and the method for developing the patterns. For each of these features we define an evaluation hypothesis and then test this hypothesis against a set of criteria and metrics. The experiments conducted and the results are presented in summary.