The Need for Distance Collaboration

Any larger software development is a group activity. The division of work into phases often means that different groups are involved at the same or different time. Due to globalization, these groups are often spread out geographically and it is common that group members live and work in different time zones. Outsourcing of subsystems to subcontractors also results in geographically co-located teams that need to work together. These groups need to communicate, collaborate, and coordinate independently of time and place.

Knowledge Management can help solve this problem as it acknowledges the need to capture, organize and store knowledge, as well as the necessity of knowledge transfer. Communication in software engineering is often related to the transfer of knowledge. Collaboration is related to mutual sharing of knowledge. Coordination that is independent of time and space is facilitated if the work artifacts and their status are stored and made part of an organizational memory.