Enabling Knowledge Sharing in Agile Virtual Teams

Abstract

Virtual teams, with a high level of interdependence and cooperation among team members, are one of the building blocks of successful global software organizations. Shared team knowledge is vital for effective collaboration in virtual teams. Hence, it makes sense for organizations to put in place efforts to ensure that teams have a sufficient level of shared knowledge. A successful agile virtual team needs to have shared knowledge on the tasks and how to do them, who knows what in the team, the development process, and the goals of the team. While shared knowledge helps on communication and collaboration, virtual teams meet several challenges in the form of values and norms, lack of face-to-face communication, time-zone differences, and difficulties in building and maintaining trust. We describe and discuss how a framework for establishing shared knowledge was applied to a global virtual agile team in a Product Centre at DNV GL -- an international provider of software for a safer, smarter and greener future in the energy, process and maritime industries. The whole group of 22 met face to face once a year, and we describe how they in one such team gathering worked on creating shared understanding about the task, the team, the process and goals of the virtual team.