Team Barriers to Tacit Knowledge Sharing in Software Development Project Teams

Software Development Projects (SDPs) are being conducted at a rapid rate in response to the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR), even though SDPs are associated with very high failure rates. Their failure rate of SDPs has been declared as an International Crisis. SDPs are knowledge intensive in nature, whereby knowledge is essential when performing socio-technical tasks within SDPs. One of the reasons for the failure of SDPs is limited sharing of tacit knowledge within SDP teams. Limited tacit knowledge sharing within SDP teams results in the teams not being in position to perform their socio-technical tasks to the required standards which leads to success of SDPs. The main purpose of this research study was to identify the team-oriented barriers that limit the sharing of tacit knowledge within SDP teams. The researchers conducted a qualitative study and relied on qualitative data to achieve the objectives of the study. The qualitative data were collected through interviews and thematic data analysis was conducted to generate the results. A total of seven team-oriented barriers were identified includes team-culture, team-orientation, team-dispersion, team-cohesion, team-characteristics, trust, and communication. These issues are related to each other and influence one another in a positive way. These barriers stem from the entire SDP team, which is responsible for ensuring the success of SDPs.