AbstractThe effective and explicit management of knowledge has been presented as a key factor in the survival of companies in current business environments. The software development business is no different. The authors of this paper investigated two software processes in three small software development companies to identify the explicit and tacit knowledge management in these processes. They examine their findings under the four knowledge management categories of creation, storing, sharing and leverage. In many cases, while the knowledge exists, it is not made explicit within the organization. Making the knowledge explicit should make the software processes more effective. Therefore, the authors make recommendations for the small software development company as to how to do this. Whether this approach can ultimately help the small software development company to move to higher levels of maturity is a research question which needs to be further explored. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.