Alexander Boden

Knowledge Management in Distributed Software Development Teams - Does Culture Matter?

Software development requires complex context specific knowledge regarding the particularities of different technologies, the potential of existing software and the needs and expectations of the users. Hence, efficient knowledge management counts amongst the most important challenges for software teams. In international teams, one of the most important issues regarding knowledge sharing is the impact of culture under different aspects: national, organizational and professional. There seem to be very few studies dealing with the issue of culture in regard to knowledge management practices in GSE. We want to contribute to the discussion by presenting case studies of small size software teams dealing with international software development in the context of offshoring. In doing so, we illustrate how cultural and social issues influence the way knowledge exchange is performed by analyzing several knowledge management practices, considering the role of meetings, artifacts and tools, knowledge brokers and mutual visits between sites.

Knowledge sharing practices and the impact of cultural factors: reflections on two case studies of offshoring in SME

The impact of culture on knowledge management in international teams is an important topic which is still not well understood. We contribute to the discussion by presenting two case studies of small software teams involved in distributed software development. In doing so, we illustrate how cultural and social issues influence the way knowledge exchange is performed by analyzing four knowledge sharing practices: status meetings and maintaining awareness, the collaborative use of shared artifacts and repositories, spending time at the other site and human ‘bridges’ that mediate between people and cultures. Our findings suggest that organizational culture is permanently re‐negotiated and adjusted to fit the distributed collaboration, as the teams learn how to deal with each other. Socialization plays a significant role in this learning process, and people are more likely to draw on national stereotypes when breakdowns occur. The influences of national culture and site‐specific organizational culture are subtle and not easy to separate from other factors. Based on our experience, we argue that in order to achieve an accurate understanding of knowledge sharing practices in globally distributed software teams, these need to be studied in context, longitudinally, and from both the onshore and offshore perspectives. Copyright

Bridging knowledge distribution - The role of knowledge brokers in distributed software development teams

Software development requires the handling of complex and context specific knowledge to be successful. Hence, efficient knowledge management (KM) counts amongst the most important challenges for any software project, but especially for small enterprises working with distributed teams. One important topic for KM in distributed teams is the role of “bridges” enacted by people who become boundary spanners and facilitate the exchange of knowledge between the sites. In our paper we present empirical findings related to such bridges in the context of two small companies with offshore sites. In doing so, we concentrate on the particular roles these knowledge brokers play in the distributed development practices. We show how small software companies rely on the commitment of particular team members and informal knowledge management practices. The paper concludes with a number of open questions to be addressed by future studies.

Supporting the social context of technology appropriation: on a synthesis of sharing tools and tool knowledge

There is an increasing spread of flexible software applications that can be modified by adding components (sometimes called plug-ins or add-ons). A popular example in the software development domain is Eclipse, a flexible development environment that can be extended with literally thousands of different plug-ins. However, searching, installing and configuring new plug-ins requires complex overhead work that is only weakly addressed by existing support mechanisms. Recent research has highlighted the related practices of learning about new plug-ins and tailoring software tools as being highly cooperative, situated, socially embedded, and often connected to particular work situations. Based on an empirical study in small software enterprises, we develop an understanding of appropriation as a social and collaborative activity. We then suggest design principles for appropriation support that are grounded in the practices we have found in the field, and present a prototypical implementation of the concept that extends existing mechanisms of sharing tools and tool-knowledge.

Trust and Social Capital: Revisiting an Offshoring Failure Story of a Small German Software Company

While work organization and social capital are known to be important factors for offshoring success, there is little empirical evidence on how these aspects evolve in the course of offshoring projects. In the literature, trust has been discussed as a personal disposition to abstain from control in a given situation, and was found to remain surprisingly stable in some cases. By analyzing the relation between control and trust in the course of a failed offshoring project, we want to add to the discussion on social capital as a factor for successful offshoring. The results of our long-term ethnographic study are somewhat paradox: in our case, ongoing conflicts motivated attempts to strengthen control, although personal trust and social capital remained strong. Despite the fact that the confidence of the partners in their offshoring project was weakened over time, the trust among the partners prevailed. However, social capital was not only unable to save the offshoring project—it also seemed to hinder the conflict resolution in some regards. Therefore, we argue that while social capital is an important factor, it should not be regarded as a context-free asset, but rather (in Bourdieus perspective) as a risky investment.

Help beacons: design and evaluation of an ad-hoc lightweight s.o.s. system for smartphones

We present the design and evaluation of a lightweight mobile S.O.S. system that facilitates ad-hoc communication between first responders and victims in emergency situations. Our approach leverages established protocols and standards in unforeseen ways to provide a platform supporting the creation of short-lived communication links. The system comprises two mobile applications: one victim application that allows the broadcasting of distress signals by a novel use of Wi-Fi SSIDs; and a responder application that allows first responders to discover and trace the people broadcasting the signals. The main difference of our system with other platforms enabling communication in crisis situations is that our system is independent from existing network infrastructure and runs on off-the-shelf, commercially available smartphones. We describe the results of our evaluation process in the context of both a design evaluation during a real-world emergency response exercise and of two user workshops in preparation for an upcoming large-scale exercise.

Towards sociable technologies: an empirical study on designing appropriation infrastructures for 3D printing

Over the last years, digital fabrication technologies such as 3D printers have become more and more common at universities and small businesses as well as in communities of hobbyist makers. The high complexity of such technologies, the rapid technological progress and the close link between hardware and software in this field poses challenges for users and communites learning how to operate these machines, especially in the contexts of existing (and changing) practices. We present an empirical study on the appropriation of 3D printers in two different communities and derive design implications and challenges for building appropriation infrastructures to help users face those challenges and making technologies more sociable.

Operational and Strategic Learning in Global Software Development

In this paper, distributed software development is discussed. With increasing globalization, distributed software teams have become fairly common. Usually, companies that offshore their software development expect a reduction of costs and access to new markets. However, distributed teams often face problems related to globally distributed works spatial, temporal, and cultural barriers. This paper also illustrates some of the challenges in organizational learning faced by small and medium enterprises engaged in offshore software development.

Articulation spaces: bridging the gap between formal and informal coordination

The high complexity of knowledge-intensive work such as software development makes it beneficial to have spaces for formal and informal articulation work. Existing information systems (IS) tend to treat these different aspects of coordination separately, resulting in problems of awareness and coordination. To bridge this gap, we present the concept of Articulation Spaces which combines aspects of Coordination Mechanisms and Common Information Spaces (CIS) in order to provide a room for mediating between the formal and informal aspects of coordination. Based on a design study in the form of a lightweight public display that has been tested in a medium-sized German software company, we show how Articulation Spaces provide information for meta-coordination, encourage ad-hoc coordination and support decision-making processes. Our findings provide insights into the design of support systems for flexible and coordination-intensive contexts such as software development work.

Global software development in a CSCW perspective

Global software development (GSD) has been an im-portant research topic in the CSCW community for more than two decades. CSCW has helped identify a significant number of challenges and solutions for han-dling distances in time, space and culture in distributed software engineering environments. However, no com-prehensive collected body of knowledge concerning research on GSD from a CSCW perspective exists yet. The goal of this workshop is to bring together research-ers and practitioners who have studied GSD from a CSCW perspective, and provide an overview of current findings and future challenges. In the workshop, we will facilitate group discussions across the diverse groups of researchers coming from ethnographic studies of soft-ware development practices and design studies of CSCW tools and processes for GSD. The goal is to pro-vide an overview of current research, which in turn may form the basis for joint publications or an edited book.