| Information Technology (IT) employment shortages may be related to employee retirement or normal attrition. Within IT job shortages, tacit knowledge is lost when employees retire or leave organizations. Tacit knowledge is unwritten or unspoken knowledge that is not easily articulated, and exists only with the individuals who obtain the knowledge through their experiences (Stenmark, 2000). A significant number of COBOL programmers will be retiring within the next five to ten years and leaving organizations with the difficult problem to replace their tacit knowledge. The difficulty may be attributed to the lack of technical documentation, lack of incoming entry-level COBOL programmers, and lack of colleges/universities teaching COBOL. There are organizations that have replaced this legacy code, but others continue to rely on COBOL.;This study explains what organizations are doing to manage the loss of knowledge from COBOL programmers who work on COBOL systems. The study employed a survey to collect data from members of Association if Information Technology Professionals (AITP), and three Western PA Organizations that have legacy systems within their organization. AITP is a professional organization that consists of IT professionals, students, and teachers across the United States. |
