Challenges and Practices for Effective Knowledge Transfer in
Globally Distributed Teams
A Systematic Literature Review
Josiane Kroll
1
, Juho Mäkiö
2
and Manal Assaad
2
1
Computer Science School, PUCRS, Porto Alegre, Brazil
2
Department of Information Technology, Hochschule Emden/Leer, Emden, Germany
Keywords: Global Software Development, Globally Distributed Team, Knowledge Management, Knowledge Transfer,
Challenge, Practice.
Abstract: In the context of Global Software Development (GSD), team members face a number of challenges that
needs to be solved. One of them relates to the transfer of knowledge needed to fulfil the required tasks. The
knowledge transfer (KT) process may be organized and implemented in various ways, as companies use
varying strategies to transfer knowledge from onsite to offshore sites. However, without effective
knowledge management practices, success in GSD will be difficult. In this paper, we aims to identify the
process activities of KT in globally distributed teams, challenges and suitable solutions for effective KT. In
order to achieve this objective, a systematic literature review (SLR) of the existing KT literature is conduct-
ed. Our findings describing the process of KT in GDT, a set of challenges and recommended practices for
effective KT. Finally, we conclude this study with a discussion of the directions for further and future re-
search.
1 INTRODUCTION
Global software development (GSD) turned from an
emerging trend in software engineering then into one
of the important competitive advantages in the in-
dustry today. In GSD, virtual teams are based in dif-
ferent countries. These teams are referred to as
Globally Distributed Teams (GDT). They pursue the
same project goals while working from different lo-
cations (Oshri et al., 2008).
The shift from an industry economy to a global,
decentralized knowledge-based economy has made
knowledge increasingly more important for organi-
zations that now operate, compete and collaborate
worldwide (Hustad, 2014). Knowledge is no longer
seen as just an object of competitive advantage but is
the core of how an organization operates to meet the
growing demands and requirements in this globally
competitive and fast-paced business environment.
Identifying the knowledge that represents the or-
ganization’s intellectual capital is a key point in
Knowledge Management (KM). KM practices, in-
cluding knowledge transfer (KT), are a major suc-
cess factor for software development, influencing
software quality and team performance (Perkins,
2006). While GSD success promises potential bene-
fits, it failure to understand and manage risks, espe-
cially those relating to KT that can result in signifi-
cant losses, including project failure (Verner and
Abdullah, 2012).
The term "knowledge transfer" is used to en-
compass various communication activities to trans-
fer knowledge. The communication model in Shan-
non and Wawer (1963) describes the information
flow from information source to destination through
an information channel. The information transmis-
sion is disturbed by "noise". We consider the "noise"
as the origin of challenges for the KT in GDT. In the
context of GSD, the result of the KT is that the in-
formation receiver has new knowledge that he/she
did not understand or know before to be able to cre-
ate the software as desired.
This work present the findings of a Systematic
Literature Review (SLR) in the field of KT in GDT
in order to identify the KT process, challenges, and
suitable practices for effective KT. Subsequently, we
classify the challenges according their origin to get a
solid basis for their mitigation. As a result, we pro-
vide a structural literature analysis and directions for
further and future research.
156
Kroll, J., Mäkiö, J. and Assaad, M.
Challenges and Practices for Effective Knowledge Transfer in Globally Distributed Teams - A Systematic Literature Review.
DOI: 10.5220/0006046001560164
In Proceedings of the 8th International Joint Conference on Knowledge Discovery, Knowledge Engineering and Knowledge Management (IC3K 2016) - Volume 3: KMIS, pages 156-164
ISBN: 978-989-758-203-5
Copyright
c
2016 by SCITEPRESS Science and Technology Publications, Lda. All rights reserved
2 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
We conducted a SLR, following the guidelines de-
fined by Kitchenham and Charters (2007). Next, we
describe the research method and all steps taken in
designing and conducting this study.
2.1 Research Questions
GSD has been practiced in industry for quite some
time, and KT has been carried out even longer than
that. Based on the perceived need for conducting a
SLR in this research field, the research questions for
this study are as follows:
RQ1: How the KT is processed in GDT?
RQ2: What builds up the "noise" in the KT?
RQ3: What are the recommended practices for
effective KT in GSD projects?
2.2 Data Sources
We searched studies through five digital libraries
(see Table 1) with a period range from 1990 to 2016.
Table 1: Papers selection.
Digital library
Results
found
Not
selection
Final
selection
IEEEXplore 45 21 24
ACM 243 230 13
Wiley InterScience 252 239 13
ScienceDirect 35 31 4
SpringerLink 99 86 13
Total 674 607 67
2.3 Search String
The main terms were included in the search string in
order to identify as many relevant papers as possible.
The search was conducted using the boolean search
expression as follows:
("globally distributed team" OR
"distributed software development" OR "global software
development" OR "global software engineering" OR "dis-
tributed software engineering") AND ("knowledge trans-
fer" OR "knowledge sharing" OR "knowledge exchange"
OR “distributed knowledge" OR “knowledge engineer-
ing” OR “information transmission”)
2.4 Studies Selection
After the data search, we came up with 674 papers.
Papers were first selected based on the title followed
by the abstract. For the final selection, authors read
the full papers to assess their relevancy and signifi-
cance to the research. The final number of papers
was then reduced to 67, as listed in Table 1.
2.5 Inclusion and Exclusion Criteria
The process of extracting information from the pri-
mary studies followed an inclusion and exclusion
criteria. Primary studies were included according to
the following criteria: Written in English, available
online, published between 1990 and 2016, and have
reported explicitly a KT research topic related to
GDT. Studies were excluded if they are: duplicate
studies, not directly related to the objective of the
research, posters, white papers, editorials, prefaces,
summaries of tutorials, panels, or having an academ-
ic teaching and learning study focus.
2.6 Validity of the Process
The main threats to the validity of the process are
the paper selection, inaccuracy in data extraction,
incorrect classification of studies, research methods
and types, and potential author bias. In order to en-
sure that process of selection and inaccuracy in data
extraction were unbiased, authors followed Kitchen-
ham and Charters (2007) recommendations. Related
to terms used to search studies, no consolidated def-
inition for KT was assumed. Regarding the study’s
classifications and findings, at least two authors dis-
cussed each paper. In case of disagreement, the issue
was discussed until a consensus was reached. There-
fore, there is a possibility that the extraction process
may have resulted in some inaccurate data.
3 RESULTS
To answer RQ2 and RQ3, we limit ourselves to list
the challenges and practices found associated with
their number of occurrences due to the lack of space
to discuss each of the items in depth. The detailed
reference for each study (S) cited in this section can
be found at https://docs.google.com/document/d/1f-
nftp04vBuitivPYVXQcrmcSIsnjL6sxJBsPzc_loo/ed
it?usp=sharing.
3.1 KT in GDT (RQ1)
KT in GDT can be done by structured and unstruc-
tured processes. Structured KT is a formal, planned
and intentional transfer process, such as workshops
and technical presentations. Unstructured KT is an
informal, unplanned and spontaneous transfer pro-
Challenges and Practices for Effective Knowledge Transfer in Globally Distributed Teams - A Systematic Literature Review
157
cess, which occurs during daily work, such as chats
and email (Chen et al., 2013). These KT processes
are carried out in different activities of the software
development life cycle. We adopted a categorization
based on these activities to report our findings and
answer RQ1. The result of the categorization and
activities identified through the SLR are summarized
in Table 2. Altogether there are five categories: (1)
Agile projects, (2) All Project Phases, (3) Initial Pro-
ject phases, (4) Development and (5) Requirements.
The number of studies referring each activity is writ-
ten in column "Studies". The column "Reference"
points the references for each study that are cited in
this section.
The “Agile projects” category represents the ac-
tivities related to KT in agile software development.
Agile software development tends to focus on im-
plicit knowledge and traditional development on ex-
plicit knowledge (Betz et al., 2014). We found that
in globally distributed agile projects, team members
share and transfer project-specific knowledge
through agile practices such as release and sprint
planning, customer collaboration, cross-functional
teams, daily scrum meetings and project retrospec-
tives, etc.
The “All project phases” category represents the
activities of KT conducted during the all software
development process. We found 16 activities in this
category. A great number of studies report the adop-
tion of communication channels and tools (7 stud-
ies), the establishment of a common database (6
studies), and informal and improvised communica-
tion (4 studies) for KT in GDT.
Some KT activities are developed only in the
beginning of the project or to support newcomers.
The “Initial project phases” category represents
those activities that are developed for KT to take
place. We found 7 activities in this category. The
majority of studies report site visits and rotation (7
studies). In such activities, teams spend time togeth-
er to interact and communicate with each other. This
interaction and communication meant that team
members with different levels of experience could
transfer their tacit and explicit knowledge to other
team members individually through shared experi-
ences (Chen et al., 2013).
Table 2: KT evidenced in the literature.
ID Category How the KT is processed in GDT? (Studies)
Reference
1 Agile projects Adoption of agile practices (2) S42, S62
2
All project
phases
Through communication channels and tools (7) S3, S36, S42, S43, S62, S63, S64
3 Establishment of a common data base (repository) (6) S29, S34, S43, S62, S63, S64
4 Informal and improvised communication (4) S33, S43, S47, S48
5 Email (3) S43, S47, S61
6 Online meetings (2) S43, S62
7 Social events (2) S34, S48
8 SharePoint-based knowledge portal (Intranet) (2) S64, S65
9 Technical discussion forum (2) S62, S63
10 Electronic media (2) S62, S63
11 Online conferences (video conferencing) (2) S42, S62
12 Wiki (2) S42, S64
13 Dynamic interaction between individual (1) S29
14
Externalization process bridged the group and the organizational
levels (1)
S29
15 Magazines (1) S65
16 Team meetings and on-demand meetings (1) S62
17 Phone calls and personal contacts (1) S64
18 Through people previously involved in activities of the SDLC (1) S33
19
Development
Establishment of a handoff process (1) S31
20 Knowledge codification and socialization processes (1) S32
21
Initial project
phases
Site visits / Rotation (7) S29, S43, S45, S47, S57, S62, S63
22 Company training program (4) S29, S34, S45, S48
23 Pair programming (3) S42, S62, S63
24 Initial on-site job training entailing pair work (2) S34, S45
25 Technical presentation (2) S62, S63
26 Bringing the offshore developers onto the customer premises (1) S36
27 Observation of work practices (1) S36
28 Workshops (1) S62
29
Requirements
Written documents / written text (3) S33, S43, S60
30 Recording detailed knowledge (1) S34
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The categories of “Development” and “Re-
quirements” represent software development phases
in particular. Each activity found in these categories
implements KT for a specific context. In “Develop-
ment”, knowledge is accomplished by the process of
handoff. The goal of handoff is to communicate the
work completed during particular time (Gupta et al.,
2011). We also found that knowledge is transferred
between individuals through knowledge codification
and socialization processes. Knowledge codification
refers to the procedures and shared meanings estab-
lished through encoding processes, while socializa-
tion refers to the interpretation and the use of labels
attached to the transferred knowledge during the
storing process (Oshri et al., 2008).
In “Requirements”, three studies report that GDT
adopt written documents or written text for KT.
Knowledge is captured in a requirements’ specifica-
tion document using a written format and shared in
an informal manner through conversations among
and between stakeholders (Gea et al., 2013). Anoth-
er study reports the adoption of recording data on-
site (Wieandt, 2008).
3.2 KT Challenges (RQ2)
We found 30 challenges to perform KT in GDT. We
mapped these challenges in three categories: Coor-
dination (see Table 3), Communication (see Table
4), and Cultural (see Table 5). We consider the KT
challenges as “noise” in the communication model
presented in Shannon and Wawer (1963).
Further, we categorize challenges in two groups:
Type 1 and Type 2 challenges. In Type 1 challenges
the origin of the challenge is in the fact that the
teams are globally distributed located. These chal-
lenges cannot be overcome without eliminating the
team distribution. The Type 2 challenges may be
eliminated or mitigated while not changing the team
distribution. Instead, they may be relieved by the
participating organizations or teams by eliminating
or by mitigating the challenge. For example, the
Table 3: Coordination challenges.
ID Challenge / Description
Freq/
Type
References
1
Temporal distance: Due to time zone differences, teams do not have
enough common working time or synchronous meetings.
13/1
S19, S29, S30, S32, S35, S38,
S39, S40, S41, S42, S44, S46, S51
2
Diversity of organizational environments: Process mismatches, differ-
ing technical and domain vocabularies, incompatible environments and
conflicting assumptions can be problematic in the GSD.
12/2
S3, S30, S32, S36, S37, S39, S44,
S41, S51, S52, S54, S55
3
Geographical distance: Inter-organizational boundaries get blurred and
relationships become complex. This makes collaboration and KT be-
tween the parties difficult.
9/1
S30, S32, S35, S36, S41, S42,
S44, S48, S56
4
Infrastructure to support KT: Systems did not always support project-
level KT. It may have negative impact on training and KT.
8/2
S19, S32, S41, S42, S48, S55,
S59, S60
5
Expertise in applying the knowledge and level of experience: Differ-
ences in skills, expertise, infrastructure, tools and methodologies hinder
KT. In addition, the lack of prior experience of working together and
changes in team membership hinder KT.
7/2 S32, S32, S35, S45, S54, S55, S61
6
Lack of awareness and control: The client has minimal awareness of
the status of KT and, therefore, no basis from which to manage it.
5/2 S35, S40, S46, S47, S48
7
Coordination and integration of multiple knowledge sources: Differ-
ent locations and departments use different terminology and tools, mak-
ing KT across departmental boundaries a challenge.
5/2 S36, S49, S50, S51, S61
8
Content, location and use of knowledge: In GSD, many people are in-
volved in the development activities, and thus organizations tend to have
problems in terms of content, location and use of knowledge.
4/2 S32, S42, S57, S61
9
Staff management: Cross-site coordination of roles and responsibilities
of the team members can hinder KT between GDT.
4/2 S37, S19, S51, S59
10 Costs management: Costs of KT are not known. 4/2 S19, S30, S40, S51
11
Unwillingness to communicate: The fixed organizational routines and
rigid structure caused, to a certain extent, an unwillingness to share the
vital knowledge.
3/2 S36, S47, S48
12
Structure of the development network does not nurture KT: The “tac-
itness” and stickiness of knowledge cause problems for KT.
3/2 S36, S42, S59
13
Changing vendor: Lack of clients’ operational knowledge needed by the
change of a long-time vendor to a new one vendor.
1/2 S19
Challenges and Practices for Effective Knowledge Transfer in Globally Distributed Teams - A Systematic Literature Review
159
challenge "Diversity of organizational environ-
ments" may be eliminated, for example, by the uni-
fication of the organizational environments. Howev-
er, the needed activities might be not desired or not
possible to conduct. Thus, suitable novel KT strate-
gies fitting to the organizational needs and possibili-
ties are needed, to overcome the challenges.
3.2.1 Category Coordination Challenges
In the category “Coordination” we found 13 KT
challenges. The Type 1 challenges, temporal dis-
tance and geographical distance, are depending on
natural circumstances that cannot be relieved direct-
ly. For their mitigation arrangements mitigating the
consequences of the challenge are needed whereby
the reason of the challenge cannot be eliminated.
However, they are both seen as important to get
solved with altogether 22 references. The rest of the
coordination challenges are Type 2 challenges that
are possible to eliminate, whereby the fundamental
organizational differences (e.g. challenge IDs 2, 7, 9,
and 11) make the elimination difficult.
3.2.2 Category Communication Challenges
We identified 11 challenges in the Communication
category. Some of them occur mostly only in multi-
lingual GDTs in which the team members have no
common spoken language or only limited
knowledge in the project language (e.g. ID 1).
Type 1 challenges occur altogether in 30 refer-
ences whereby the Type 2 challenges occur in 22
references. The "language difference" seems to be
hard to overcome – thus we categorize it as Type 1
challenge. Personal attributes, like in challenges
(IDs 2, 6 and 8) are difficult to overcome, as person-
al attributes are difficult to change. The ID 9 is
founded with the complexity of the information. We
argue that complex information stays complex and it
may get simplified through suitable presentation.
3.2.3 Category Cultural Challenges
In the category Cultural challenges we found 6 chal-
lenges. The frequency of Type 1 challenges is in the
references much higher (21) than the frequency of
Type 2 challenges (6 times). The “cultural diversity”
is considered as Type 1 challenge, as face-to-face
meetings are an exception in distributed teams. In
the cases that the social rules are an issue in GDTs,
they are hard to get eliminated as the implementa-
tion of new cultural rules and habits is a difficult en-
deavour. Also the challenge ID 6 is hard to eliminate
or to mitigate in a GDT, as the political systems are
far above the possibilities to make a change in a
team.
Table 4: Communication challenges.
ID Challenge / Description Freq/ Type References
1
Language differences: Information may be written or spoken in a language that is
a foreign language for the team members and thus will be hard to understand. The
information may be also represented from different perspectives than expected
leading to misunderstandings.
15/1
S19, S29, S30, S32, S35,
S36, S38, S39, S42, S44,
S45, S47, S48, S48, S50
2
Poor communication: The effectiveness of KT in virtual organizations is limited
because people tend to simplify knowledge when using technology as a communi-
cation media, and communication messages can lose richness in these settings.
13/2
S19, S32, S35, S36, S37,
S38, S41, S42, S46, S49,
S50, S52, S53
3
Mental models: Differences in absorptive capacity between knowledge provider
and recipients (personal attributes).
7/1
S19, S29, S30, S32, S42,
S52, S55
4
Lack of appropriate tools: A few tools support KT in GDT and some of them
were not developed for KT purpose.
4/2 S19, S36, S40, S59
6 Knowledge types and needs: Knowledge needs vary from person to person. 4/1 S37, S47, S48, S56
7
Poor or lack of documentation: Documentation is an important means to share
and transfer information, and its quality is essential for success.
3/2 S3, S19, S36
8
Transfer technological knowledge: Technological knowledge between the differ-
ent organizational units is particularly challenging when employees have to dele-
gate sophisticated individual software development tasks to offshore workers,
which requires constant communication and adjustment processes.
3/1 S34, S45, S51
9
Complexity and stickiness of knowledge: The diversity of contexts exacerbates
the ‘stickiness’ of information.
1/1 S36
10
Inadequate understanding of the customer’s business: The shared understand-
ing may not reflect the original needs.
1/2 S36
11
Loss of knowledge in project hand-off processes: Different locations and de-
partments use different terminology and tools in handoff processes making KT
across departmental boundaries a challenge.
1/2 S3
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Table 5: Cultural challenges.
ID Challenge / Description
Freq./
Type
References
1
Cultural diversity: Cultural barriers negatively affect face-to-
face interaction, communication and collaboration.
17/1
S19, S29, S30, S32, S33, S36, S38, S39, S40,
S41, S42, S43, S44, S45, S46, S47, S48
2
Social rules: Cultural rules, habits and subconsciously accepted
rules affect offshored business process and IT outsourcing.
3/1 S29, S47, S51
3
Trust and motivation to transfer and share knowledge:
Knowledge source may be not trustworthy, and trust affects co-
operative learning.
3/2 S19, S29, S47
4
Incentives and Priorities: Incentives and priorities for taking
the necessary time to engage in the KT.
3/2 S37, S48, S56
5
Climate: Working conditions and physical surroundings in GSD
projects.
2/2 S29, S44
6
Political philosophy: Political issues cause rigidness and routine
in the operating models.
1/1 S29
3.3 Practices for Effective KT (RQ3)
We identified 43 practices for effective KT in GDT.
The practices are sorted according to the challenges
in the KT.
- Practices for Coordination Challenges
Use of enabling technologies: different technol-
ogies must be employed to successfully ensure that
various offshore sites can efficiently share
knowledge resources (Gupta et al., 2011).
Transactive memory system: it can be devel-
oped and maintained to support KT through the
propagation of certain rules and standardized work
that can overcome differences in local contexts, skill
levels and work routines (Manteli et al., 2011).
Adoption of common platforms and tools
among sites: the organizational unities should pro-
vide a common infrastructural platform, which
makes use of different project-specific and generic
environments in which members of projects can in-
teract using collaboration tools (Clerc, 2008).
Adoption of personal coordination mecha-
nisms: mechanisms such as routines that encourage
personal interfacing have a direct influence on KT
effectiveness (Chen et al., 2013).
Mitigation of project issues: project guidelines
should define the teams’ participation in require-
ments elicitation and mapping during KT and week-
ly meetings (Nidhra et al., 2013).
Share point-based knowledge portal: it pro-
vides specific information to all employees (Apte
and Hofmann, 2012).
Development of guidelines and handbooks:
describes architectural solution, quality conformance
rules, configuration tools (Zahedi and Babar, 2014).
Project knowledge: all the knowledge generated
in the project should be made as accurate, complete
and updated as possible (Gea et al., 2013).
Promote staffing motivation: individual moti-
vation stimulation, mentoring and shadowing, and
credible knowledge sender (Nidhra et al., 2013).
Increase personal attributes: education in
business processes, technology management and in-
terpersonal skills (Nidhra et al., 2013).
Mitigation of project issues for requirements:
conducting oral and written tests/quizzes, reverse
presentations for requirements validation, support
simulation, playback or replay sessions (Nidhra et
al., 2013).
Mitigation of project processes: understanding
the organizational learning sub process, leveraging
knowledge base and experience of peers, dynamic
navigation aids to search information, modulariza-
tion, use of outside expertise, joint collaboration,
personal identities at work (Nidhra et al., 2013).
Requirements understanding: for newcomers
is important to experiment with the system than to
have up-to-date and complete documentation. New-
comers need to have ways to find and access rele-
vant documentation (Nidhra et al., 2013).
Adoption of traditional mechanisms: coordina-
tion and control frameworks, combined with appro-
priate integrated voice, data and video communica-
tion technologies could be effective methods and
tools for KT in projects (Wongthongtham et al.,
2005).
On-site customer: when customers are working
on-site with the team, collaboration can be enhanced
through effective participation in release planning,
daily meetings, review meetings and retrospectives
(Dorairaj et al., 2012).
Jointly modelling processes: it can be an ap-
propriate solution to enhance KT if the effort is not
too big in comparison with the project itself, which
can be the case, especially if the involved companies
Challenges and Practices for Effective Knowledge Transfer in Globally Distributed Teams - A Systematic Literature Review
161
are not process driven (Betz et al., 2014).
Team set up and adjustment: it is obtained
through the learning of agreement roles, responsi-
bilities and authorities, definition of an explicit
statement of the project goals, communication about
the design rationale, management of resources and
aligning teams (Parviainen and Tihinen, 2014).
Team synchronizing: definition of clear and
fixed requirements, a common shared understanding
of the architecture and information about the per-
formed tests and test results, the compatibility of the
partners’ development tools and environments, and
the identification of cultural differences (Parviainen
and Tihinen, 2014).
Implementation of virtual environments to
develop competences: if individuals possess more
of a certain type of competence, they will be able to
achieve higher performance (Wang and Haggerty,
2009).
Define responsibilities: it includes asking di-
rectly when problems occur, asking emergent peo-
ple, when required (Kwan and Damian, 2011).
- Practices for Communication Challenges
Communication tools: it includes document
management, video conferencing, e-mails, wikis and
instant messaging can support communication
(Nidhra et al., 2013).
Awareness improvement: frequent meetings
can improve awareness among distributed sites
(Wende et al., 2013; Gea et al., 2013).
Face-to-face interaction: it facilitates effective
KT between team members (Razzak and Mite,
2015).
Explicit KT: it can be successfully transferred in
the form of documentation and data (Wende et al.,
2013).
Informal communication: the offshored teams
should continually have on going informal conversa-
tions with onshore teams (Kristjánsson et al., 2012).
Adoption of a centralized communication
structure: it can help new teams to remain aware,
whereas a decentralized structure decreases commu-
nication (Gea et al., 2013).
Community of practice: define a community of
practices to share common interests and have face-
to-face meetings (Nidhra et al., 2013).
Social media tools for urgent requests: adop-
tion of social media tools provides services for dis-
tribution of information as an urgent request mecha-
nism for KT (Apte and Hofmann, 2012).
Discussions: it facilitates openness and commu-
nication between teams in different locations. Dis-
cussions with subject matter experts on specific is-
sues faced in the teams provide opportunities to re-
fine, reprioritize, and generate requirements and so-
lution (Dorairaj et al., 2012).
Information though magazines: monthly quali-
ty magazines to disseminate best practices (Apte and
Hofmann, 2012).
Communication between remote teams: re-
mote team members shall find a way to socialize,
interact virtually and perhaps even simulate a shared
space for creating and exchanging tacit knowledge
(Razzak and Mite, 2015).
Email lists: e-mail lists are characterized by fre-
quent discussions and questions on a specific topic
related to project. These topics are not further struc-
tured, but allow for fellow practitioners to share ex-
periences and respond to questions (Betz et al.,
2014; Clerc, 2008).
Implement a knowledge repository: a central-
ized knowledge repository shared by client and ven-
dor is considered important for successful KT (Betz
et al., 2014).
Group problem solving: it is obtained through
the adequate communication means and information
sharing and management of collaboration related
risks (Parviainen and Tihinen, 2014).
Division of work and responsibility into small-
er units: minimizing communication-related prob-
lems is to decrease communication needs and con-
tact points to a minimum by splitting the project into
smaller, independent units managed by a local man-
ager. If no local project manager can be appointed,
at least a contact person should be named for an-
swering questions and acting as a contact point
(Komi-Sirviö and Tihinen, 2005).
- Practices for Cultural Challenges
Cultural bridges: cultural bridges can be estab-
lished by creating collectivist culture, onsite visits
and replay sessions, and cultural workshops (Nidhra
et al., 2013).
Visits: GSD teams should visit other members in
different locations when and as needed to gain better
understanding of critical situations through face-to-
face interactions that offer rich communication and
effective KT (Dorairaj et al., 2012).
Rotation: rotation of team members between
different locations, often between 3-6 months, pro-
motes the distribution of the business and domain
knowledge across the teams (Dorairaj et al., 2012).
Creating a common culture: to create a com-
mon culture, one needs to choose a specific, com-
mon language that is to be used within the organiza-
tion (Gea et al., 2013).
Establish relationship among team members:
the success of implicit KT is further moderated by
the quality of the relationship among group mem-
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162
bers. If knowledge recipient and source do not have
a trusting relationship, willingness to transfer back-
ground information and implicit knowledge is inhib-
ited (Wende et al., 2013).
Promoting trust: understand the language and
business culture of the clients, reinforce communica-
tion, pay attention to client relationship manage-
ment, frequent travelling, and private contacts
(Nidhra et al., 2013).
Mentoring technique: mentoring has been iden-
tified as one of the leading success factors in ex-
panding the organizational culture (Casado-
Lumberas and Colomo-Palacios, 2015).
4 DISCUSSION
The results of this review have given us useful in-
sights into KT in GDT. First, KT process in GDT
includes different activities. There are activities that
are for specific phases of the software development
life cycle and others are performed over the project
development. What is interesting to observe is that
agile practices promote KT in GDT. Since, agile de-
velopment is becoming more popular in literature
and in the software industry, we consider further in-
vestigate agile software development for effective
KT in GDT and the transition of knowledge between
collocated teams and GDT.
Second, we found the relationship between prac-
tices and challenges. The practices to eliminate or to
mitigate the challenges in KT are focused mostly on
Type 2 challenges as they may be eliminated or mit-
igated while keeping the team distribution upright
and because they are easier to implement with con-
crete and clear actions. However, a significant part
of the referenced challenges belong to the group
Type 1. They are difficult or not possible to address
directly with commonly used practices. Thus, novel
concepts are needed to address those challenges.
As aforementioned, the term "knowledge trans-
fer" is used to encompass various communication
activities to transfer knowledge. In GSD it is im-
portant that the information receiver has the required
knowledge to be able to fulfil his/her part in the
software development process. A number of various
practices can be applied to perform KT. However, as
shown in this paper, a number of challenges are still
unsolved.
We propose to consider the KT as a teaching
process, in which the sender teaches the information
receiver. In this, e-learning practices may be used
for the KT in GDTs. The material that is to be taught
needs to be prepared adequately, to be suitable for
the e-learning environment.
5 CONCLUSIONS
In summary, a number of conclusions can be drawn
from this study as follows:
Conclusion 1 - The temporal, geographical and so-
cio-cultural distance of GDT may limit KT: Our re-
view has revealed that there are several contextual
factors of a project that may impact on the KT in
GDT. Some of the factors are identified as challeng-
es in the reviewed studies as shown in Tables 3, 4,
and 5.
Conclusion 2 - Agile practices can promote effective
KT in GDT: Based on results of our review, agile
practices are helpful to support KT in GDT. Howev-
er, the differences between software development
processes for KT in collocated teams and GDT still
not clear. KT can be approached in a different way
in GDT.
Conclusion 3 - There is no one size fits it all solu-
tion to solve the KT challenges in GDT: Our review
has revealed that there is a number of KT challenges
in GDT. However, additional research is needed to
define, when and which KT practices may be seen as
best practices for GDTs.
Conclusion 4 - A deeper understanding about the
characteristics and the effects of Type 1 and Type 2
challenges is needed for GDT is needed: The results
of this review provide information that can be useful
for GSD practitioners’ understanding of the various
challenges that may impact KT in distributed set-
tings. However, the difference between the two
types of challenges is needed to be able to develop
suitable strategies to mitigate them.
Findings from this study present a key start for
further research in this area. Finally, the evidence
found in literature about the identified mitigating
strategies is very low. Therefore, it is difficult to of-
fer any specific advice to practitioners solely based
on this review. There is no one fits it all solution in
this field. Much more, there is a set of various prac-
tices that may be installed in a specific situation to
make KT effective in GDT.
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