Knowledge Work Practices in Global Software Development

Authors

  • Gabriela Avram

Keywords:

collaboration, work practices, distributed work environments, global software development, knowledge work, mutual knowledge, transactive memory

Abstract

This paper is an exploration of knowledge work practices in a distributed software development setting. The author has undertaken an empirical study in the Irish subsidiary of a multinational company over a 16‑month period. Our methods were inspired by ethnography; by spending an extended period of time with a software development team working on a specific project, we had the opportunity to observe real work practices in a real work setting in the specific circumstances of distributed work. The purpose of the current study is to highlight the ways in which technical and social factors are inextricably entwined in distributed work settings.

Downloads

Published

1 Dec 2007

Issue

Vol. 5 No. 4 (2007)

Section

Articles

License

Open Access Publishing

The Electronic Journal of Knowledge Maangement operates an Open Access Policy. This means that users can read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without financial, legal, or technical barriers other than those inseparable from gaining access to the internet itself. The only constraint on reproduction and distribution, and the only role for copyright in this domain, is that authors control  the integrity of their work, which should be properly acknowledged and cited.