Starting a Knowledge Engineering Project: A Step-by-Step Approach
Michael J. Freiling, James H. Alexander, Steven L. Messick, Steven Rehfuss, Sheryl J. Shulman · 1985
Getting started on a new knowledge engineering proj-ect is a difficult and challenging task, even for those who have done it before. For those who haven’t, the task can of-ten prove impossible. One reason is that the requirements-oriented methods and intuitions learned in the develop-ment of other types of software do not carry over well to the knowledge engineering task. Another reason is that methodologies for developing expert systems by extract-ing, representing, and manipulating an expert’s knowledge have been slow in coming. At Tektronix, we have been using a step-by-step ap-proach to prototyping expert systems for over two years now. The primary features of this approach are that it gives software engineers who do not know knowledge en-gineering an easy place to start, and that it proceeds in a step-by-step fashion from initiation to implementation without inducing conceptual bottlenecks into the devel-opment process. This methodology has helped us collect the knowledge necessary to implement several prototype knowledge-based systems, including a troubleshooting as-sistant for the Tektronix FG-502 function generator and an operator’s assistant for a wave solder machine. One fundamental assumption we make is that knowl-edge is more valuable than inference strategies. Often a company may have only one chance to acquire the knowl-edge, but can work on it later at leisure. A second assump-tion is that a knowledge engineering project must provide adequate documentation of its progress. At any stage in the process, knowledge engineers must be able to show some fruits of their labor.