24-HOUR KNOWLEDGE FACTORY PARADIGM  AND ITS ROLE IN IT COLLABORATIONS IN ORGANIZATIONS

Satwiksai Seshasai, IBM and Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Amar Gupta, University of Arizona and Massachusetts Institute of Technology

ABSTRACT

A new paradigm based on the 24-Hour Knowledge Factory is emerging in software development, where groups spanning the globe collaborate on the same work product over the entire 24 hour day, as a means to reduce development time and costs. This paradigm supports a gain in productivity but requires smooth transfer of knowledge -- such as the rationale behind key architectural decisions -- among distant development teams. Distant collaboration is seen in conventional wisdom as a barrier to overcome because of the challenges in coordinating work amongst remote sites. In this paper, we report a case study comparing a co-located team and a distributed team to provide empirical evidence of the utility of Internet-based collaborative platforms. Our evidence show that context-driven knowledge transfer via Internet can provide an effective mechanism for transcending geographic barriers through the use of intuitive interfaces and visualizations. When applied in conjunction with existing versioning systems and code repositories, these interfaces and visualizations can allow developers to gain several benefits: rapid contextual understanding of the previous teams' contributions; and more effective handling of management tasks such as task assignment and planning.