Global Software Development: A Case Study of Knowledge Management Challenges and Industry Approaches

Abstract

Recent years, Global Software Development has been pervasive in the field of software development. Research literature describes empirically observed benefits and challenges, but it is descriptive and pragmatic, and offers little theoretic grounding of the findings. The literature recognizes communication and transfer of knowledge as one of the main issues haunting software development, causing poor implementation of projects and poor software quality. This report presents a case study of globally distributed software development, the communicational and knowledge managerial challenges observed, and theoretic reasoning of these. Mitos Desert projects have been ongoing for several years with teams in India and Norway. The observed challenges are inadequate information quality when using a middleman in communication; difficulties due to people s preferences on written and oral language use; unbalanced knowledge distribution causing dependencies across sites; lack of informal talks across sites causing coordination issues. Mitos approaches to cope with these challenges includes extensive visiting; a kit to promote rapid learning for new joiners; intermediaries with cross-cultural experience; quarterly feedback; written summary of meetings to confirm correct interpretation. Overall, Mitos shows maturity in conducting global software development, causing relatively smooth implementation of such projects. Through the discussion of challenges and solutions, this report shows that a theoretic grounding can contribute to describe why challenges occur and solutions work, rather than only describing what happens. Also, the study shows the vital role of theories for a better understanding of knowledge managerial aspects of global software development.