Towards Architectural Knowledge Management Practices for Global Software Development

Practices for architectural knowledge management (AKM) may alleviate the challenges involved with GSD. We have conducted empirical research at a large Dutch IT service provider to validate a set of practices for architec-tural knowledge management in GSD and to specifically in-vestigate the relation between the number of sites and the perceived usefulness of these practices. The results show that AKM practices supporting a personalization strategy towards knowledge management are perceived to be more useful than practices that support a codification strategy. Further, the usefulness of AKM practices in general is con-firmed. Finally, we observe a peak in the perceived useful-ness of AKM practices in projects that evolved to a multi-site situation. This high perceived usefulness denotes a more critical need to plan for AKM practices in advance. 1