Most businesses rely on the fact that their employees possess relevant knowledge and that they can apply it to the task at hand. But a serious problem exists, this knowledge is not owned by the organisation as such. Rather the knowledge is owned and controlled by its employees. The success or failure of the KM systems and the various KM practices claimed to be adopted by software engineering organisations can be best judged from software engineers’ point of view as they are the ones who are the first-hand users of the KM systems and technologies. © 2012 IEEE.