Investigating the role of organizational structure in developing shared understanding of requirements within GSD

Developing requirements for software projects require shared understanding of requirements among all the team members. But in Global Software Development (GSD) this shared understanding becomes harder to achieve because of the challenges inherited in GSD; these challenges include cultural diversity, inadequate communication, Time Zone difference and improper knowledge management. By its very nature, software development consists of many knowledge management practices. One of the important needs is to study the impact of these practices on shared understanding of requirements in GSD. During three months controlled experiment in an academic setting with two groups of geographically distributed students; we studied the impact of “clear organizational structure with communicating responsibilities” a practice of Knowledge Management on shared understanding of requirements. We observed the understanding patterns of both teams by conducting multiple concept mapping exercises. This paper presents comparison of results obtained from concept mapping exercises of both development teams. These results demonstrate that how selected knowledge management practice helps to improve shared understanding of requirements among GSD team members.