Knowledge Integration in Software Teams

This research investigates knowledge workers’ individual time management practices. At an academic institution in the United States, a set of in-depth semi-structured interviews was conducted to explore how individual knowledge workers manage their time demands and respond to the temporal norms and boundaries designed by their organizations. This research extends and applies taxonomies used for knowledge management to time management. Based on the qualitative analysis, a variety of approaches to managing time were identified. Personal time management practices mainly involve individual and organizational constraints that guide the perception of time and the allocation of resources around deadlines, distinguishing between work and family contexts. Moreover, the research shows that knowledge workers focus on conditional knowledge of time (i.e., understanding when the deadlines are), and pragmatic knowledge (i.e., finding out appropriate strategies for achieving time management goals). Study limitations and future research opportunities are also discussed

Knowledge Integration in Software Teams: An Assessment of Project Uncertainty and IT-Usage as Antecedents

Organizational knowledge resources typically exist in specialized pockets scattered across the firm. As distributed knowledge systems, firms’ capacity to manage their knowledge resources is linked with their ability to integrate these pockets of specialized knowledge. Firms are increasingly depending on teams to strategically consolidate their dispersed knowledge into productive outcomes. Teams integrate knowledge from external sources with internal knowledge such as skills, know-how, and expertise of their members to create project outcomes. The aim of this research will be to examine how knowledge integration in software teams is influenced by project uncertainty and IT-usage

Factors Contributing to Knowledge Integration

In contributing to the vision heading towards becoming industrialized and developed nation, most of the Malaysian organizations have played their role in the transition process from information age to knowledge age, from the era of industrial economy to the era of economy based on knowledge. Central during this transition period is the knowledge contribution of knowledge workers who are the valuable assets to the organizations and thus protecting and preserving knowledge of the knowledge workers is very crucial and need urgent attention. This is possible through knowledge integration by integrating information into knowledge base. This research examines the factors contributing to knowledge integration by looking at the influence of the content of knowledge work on knowledge work performance,and influence of knowledge workers’ characteristics and organizational characteristics on knowledge integration capacity. Knowledge work performance and knowledge integration capacity are then tested as the mediating factors. The key test in this research is the test regarding moderating factors for the three types of specific knowledge (context-specific, technology-specific, and context-and-technology-specific)to moderate the relationship between the content of knowledge work and knowledge work performance among knowledge workers. Capitalizing on quantitative approach, data from 471 knowledge workers is collected from March 2011 to May 2011.The collected data is tested and proven to support the research framework where all components have positive significant relationship. On the test regarding the moderating effect to the relationship in the model, it is found the general knowledge moderate the relationship between the content of knowledge work and knowledge work performance. Nevertheless,the tests on each component reveal otherwise. This shows that in the case of Malaysian knowledge workers the specific knowledge has to be considered together, not separately, to realize the moderating effect on the relationship between the content of knowledge work and knowledge work performance

Using a Social Capital Lens to Identify the Mechanisms of Top Management Commitment: A Case Study of a Technology Project

The implementation of large-scale technology projects is still fraught with failures resulting in tremendous costs to organizations. One of the factors that is widely recognized as critical for achieving technology implementation success (and, for that matter, projects in general) is top management commitment. The actual mechanisms by which top management impacts project success, however, have not received much attention in the project management literature. We use a case study approach here to illustrate how social capital theory provides a useful lens for understanding how top management's actions impact project success and show how project success is strengthened by the enhancement of social capital through top management commitment. We employ causal maps to clarify, illustrate, and visualize the complex interactions between top management commitment and social capital in facilitating project success. This study contributes to the literature and theory on the mechanisms by which top management commitment influences project success by offering propositions for future research

Knowledge Integration in Outsourced Software Development: The Role of Sentry and Guard Processes

We examine the role of sentry and guard activities in outsourced software development. Sentry activities are designed to regulate the inflow of external information to the project teams and guard activities are designed to manage the outflow of teams’ information and resources to external sources. The use of sentry and guard activities has been examined in teams in other contexts such as new product development, but their role and relationship to performance in software development teams is not well understood. We hypothesize and test curvilinear relationships between these activities and knowledge integration in vendor development teams. We also examine how these effects vary under conditions of greater project uncertainty. We tested the hypotheses using data from 139 vendor development teams drawn from sixteen Indian software companies. Results highlight complex curvilinear associations among sentry and guard activities, and knowledge integration, which are further impacted by the level of uncertainty that the project team faces. We recommend that carefully calibrating sentry and guard processes will help vendor development teams enhance project outcomes

Knowledge Integration and Team Effectiveness: A Team Goal Orientation Approach

Knowledge integration is critical to achieving both objective and subjective team effectiveness goals. Integrating knowledge resources, however, is a challenging activity for teams. Converging the theories of team goal orientation and knowledge integration, in this study we examine how team goal orientation impacts a team's internal knowledge integration, and how knowledge integration, in turn, affects multiple dimensions of team effectiveness. Data were collected from 90 self-directed teams engaged in an extended business simulation, where each team acted as a top management team of a business firm. Results indicated that both learning and performance-prove goal orientations positively influenced team knowledge integration, and knowledge integration impacted both objective and subjective dimensions of team effectiveness. We also found partial support for a mediating role of internal knowledge integration. The study recommends a goal orientation approach to integrating knowledge in teams and proposes that this approach has significant implications for both research and practice

Large-Scale Agile Project Management in Safety-Critical Industries: A Case Study on Challenges and Solutions

While agile project management offers benefits such as faster time to market and improved collaboration, scaling it to larger projects presents challenges, particularly in safety-critical industries. This research provides insights into the resistance to agile adoption due to regulatory constraints and other barriers. The findings contribute to information systems literature by identifying four challenges (organizational, technological, behavioral, regulatory) and complementing solutions to show how large-scale agile can work in safety-critical industries

Managing information for innovation using knowledge integration capability: The role of boundary spanning objects

Knowledge Integration (KI) or the capability to collate and process distinctive stocks of organizational information is central to innovation. Although an essential capability, KI is also challenging to accomplish in practice due to relational obstacles. The relational obstacles arise because of knowledge boundaries: (a) syntactic boundary where the challenge is to transfer the knowledge; (b) semantic boundary where the challenge is to translate the knowledge; and (c) pragmatic boundary, where the challenge is to transform the knowledge to realize relational rents. In this paper, we propose that these relational obstacles could be resolved through a common lexicon, common meaning, and common interests, or common knowledge of knowledge actors that can serve as potential drivers to realizing relational rents. Analysis of data collected from 139 small firms indicates that common meaning and common interests positively influence KI. Further, KI positively influences organizational innovation. Moreover, the results demonstrate that novelty plays a crucial role in affecting the strength of relational resources’ relationships with KI capability. As novelty increases, the importance of common meaning and common interests on KI capability increases. Our findings contribute to our understanding of the role of relational obstacles and KI and empirically assess the efficacy of boundary-spanning objects in facilitating KI capability and innovation