These are not fixed definitions or industry terms. They are working concepts that have emerged from observing how software teams understand systems and make decisions.
6 conceptsRepresentation
How knowledge is expressed.
Information does not remain neutral when its form changes. A list, decision table, diagram or conversation may contain the same facts while producing very different levels of understanding.
Organisational Memory
How knowledge survives people.
An organisation cannot rely on individual memory indefinitely. Documentation, decision records and shared models allow knowledge to remain usable when the people who created it are no longer available.
Search Cost
The effort required to locate knowledge before useful work can begin.
A team may already possess the answer and still lose time finding it. Search cost appears through unclear ownership, missing documentation, vague naming and repeated handovers.
Context
The minimum understanding required before reasoning becomes possible.
Context tells someone where a problem belongs, which part of the system matters and which mental model should guide the investigation. Without it, technically sound reasoning can begin in the wrong place.
System History
The accumulated decisions embedded in a product over time.
Components, configurations and behaviours carry the history of earlier customer needs, regulations and architectural choices. A small request can therefore touch a much larger structure than its visible surface suggests.
Confidence
The trust required to reuse existing knowledge instead of rebuilding it.
Knowledge may exist without being discoverable or credible enough to guide a decision. When teams cannot trust what the organisation already knows, they begin designing new solutions to old problems.