Key factors in knowledge acquisition

Abstract

In recent years there has been a tremendous increase in the development of Expert Systems (ESs) in organizations. This increased development is straining the already limited supply of qualified ES developers. These ES developers have come to be know as Knowledge Engineers (KEs), and their job as Knowledge Engineering. The process of Knowledge Engineering is divided into two tasks: Knowledge Acquisition (KA) and ES construction. KA has been defined as "The process of extracting, structuring, and organizing Knowledge from several sources, usually human experts, so it can be used in a program." (Waterman, 1986; p. 392) This process of KA has been identified as the "bottleneck" that currently constrains the development of ESs.This paper summarizes what is known about the KA process in an effort to identify what the key factors are that influence the success of the KA phase of the Knowledge Engineering process. Due to the similarities that exist between ESs and traditional systems development, the literature that pertains to traditional Information Requirements Determination and to Systems Analysts will be utilized to guide this exploration. Case study reports of actual ES development projects and the practitioner literature from this highly applied field will also be referenced. A model of the knowledge Engineering process has been developed and will be used to help determine and discuss the key factors that influence the KA process.Five key factors have been identified and will be discussed in detail. These factors are: the attributes of the participants in the ES development process; elicitation techniques utilized in the process; the development of external representations; representation selection problems; and the verification of the ES by the Domain Expert who participates in its continued development via the user-system interface. These factors are presented, key issues identified, and research questions suggested for each area.It is hoped that the analysis of the key factors in KA will lead to the identification of the skills and techniques necessary to successfully perform the KA process. Once these skills have been identified, training programs can be developed to help reduce the shortage of qualified KEs and, ultimately, facilitate the increased development of ESs in organizations.