Managing Critical Knowledge Management Issues in Global Software Development Projects

Software development is a complex, knowledgeintensive, and innovative process that frequently takes place in an extremely competitive and highly uncertain environment. For a long time, software developers have used traditional-structured approaches that are more disciplined and focus on coordinated actions to ensure the software goals are met. Recently, this traditional way of software development has faced challenges by an alternative approach, namely, Agile Method. The essences of Agile Method basically include the incorporation of autonomy into software development to nurture the creativity and resourcefulness of developers. In this paper, we identify the critical knowledge management (KM) issues currently arising in many global software development projects and the methods for their management. We also present a framework for the adoption of an agile method to manage complex software development projects in a global environment. This framework can be characterized as ‘Discipline at the Global Level, Be Agile at the Local