Measuring knowledge sharing behaviour among software development teams

Abstract

Background: Knowledge is a crucial asset for organisations to gain sustainable competitive advantage. Software development organisations are trying their best to promote teamwork in projects to improve information technology (IT) project success. Team members working in the same projects interact more often to share the progress of their assigned tasks and to share their expertise and experiences for them to deliver the projects successfully within the triple constraints of time, scope and cost.

Objectives: This study was undertaken to explore the measuring of knowledge sharing behaviour among software development teams. The study is therefore aimed at measuring the intentions of software development teams in knowledge sharing and how that can affect the success of IT projects.

Method: Four software development organisations in South Africa participated successfully in this research study. This is a quantitative research study with a response rate of 53%. Expert sampling was used to get rich data from experts in the field of IT. Data were collected using an online questionnaire.

Results: Results have revealed that employee attitudes are the main drivers of knowledge sharing behaviour and employees are not willing to share their knowledge if they are not compensated to do so. It was revealed that knowledge capture is not significant at all and these findings were contradicting with the current literature and further research is required.

Conclusion: For organisations to be competitive, it is crucial for them to manage their knowledge effectively. Software development organisations are trying their best to promote teamwork in projects in order to improve IT project success. Project managers can focus on creating reward systems to motivate their project teams to share knowledge.