Knowledge Flow as Facilitator for Getting into Collaboration in Distributed Software Development

The software industry is facing a paradigm shift towards distributed software development (DSD). This change creates situations from which organizations may benefit, and challenges to which they must adapt to (e.g. the absence of opportunities for informal interaction). In this paper we present the results of an analysis of the knowledge flow problems which hinder members of a DSD team to get into synchronous collaboration. We used the KoFI methodology to identify knowledge sources, topics, and existing flows, and to identify knowledge flow problems in the DSD environment. These have been used as a basis for the design and development of CWS-IM, an extended instant messenger tool which implements "Selective Availability" to facilitate "l'entree en collaboration" of the members of a DSD team. Therefore, it is expected that the interruptions during DSD will be less disturbing as this tool helps users to decide when it is the most suitable moment to establish synchronous contact for the sender and the receiver.