Dedicated Support for Experience Sharing in Distributed Software Projects

Paper i proceeding, 2014

Systematic management of experience and knowledge in distributed software development promises huge increases in effectivity and efficiency. Yet, specific problems need to be overcome: Communication between partners is difficult and awareness about the knowledge available at different locations is impaired. Even motivated developers are often reluctant to share experiences, because they do not know where and how to submit them as well as if they are allowed to share sensitive information or intellectual property. If they submit, their experiences are often presented in a way not useful for others and cannot be easily refined into best practices. In this paper we identify barriers of knowledge sharing in a literature review and discuss how dedicated tool support and automated heuristic critiques can mitigate such problems by offering the following features and qualities: guidance of project participants in creating experiences that will more likely be helpful, positive influence of their motivation to share, and easily accessible and integrated into a trustworthy experience engineering processes. Preliminary evaluation with a prototype shows that this concept can increase willingness to submit experience as well as their quality.