Technological Communication Tools in Use

The Shape of Knowledge Shared within Software Development Teams

Danieli Pinto

, Karoline Garcia

and Nelson Tenório

Knowledge Management Masters’ Degree Program, UniCesumar, Av. Guedner n.1610, Maringá-PR, Brazil

Math, Technology, and Agrarian Center (CETA), UniCesumar, Maringá-PR, Brazil

Knowledge Management Masters’ Degree Program, UniCesumar, Maringá-PR, Brazil

Keywords: Technological, Communication Tools, Software Development Teams.

Abstract: Knowledge is a strong competitive source for organizations, giving sustainability, and generating long-term

success to them. Communication is the basis of the software project since it provides a way to share knowledge

among development team members. Technological tool adoption is one of the strategies to improve

communication within software development teams and provide the knowledge sharing among its members.

Thus, this paper aims to investigate the shape of the knowledge shared by software development teams

through technological communication tools (tech-comm-tools). We collected data through a structured

questionnaire and face-to-face interviews. The findings point out the team knowledge is shared by mean texts,

photos, and videos according to four categories, such as notification, issues, support to clients, and

socialization.

1 INTRODUCTION

Knowledge is something that can be processed and

stored in the human mind. It is originating from facts,

procedures, concepts, interpretations, ideas,

observations and judgments (Wiig, 1997). According

to Ipe (2003), knowledge arises through the

interaction between individuals at various levels of

the organization. However, is only possible to take

advantage of the knowledge when it is shared.

Sharing knowledge means to communicating

something (Hendriks, 1999) through information,

skills, or experience to other individuals (Bukowitz &

Willians, 1999), i.e., to make knowledge available to

other individuals within the organization, thus

creating a link between organization and individual.

When this knowledge reaches the organizational

levels, it is converted into economic and competitive

value for whole the organization (Ipe, 2003). Also,

the author suggests that knowledge sharing is not

giving up possession of what is known, but rather the

act of making knowledge available to others, enabling

the recipient to transform knowledge so that it is

understood, absorbed, and useful.

Sveiby (1998) highlights that Knowledge

Management only makes sense whether people's

knowledge can be shared. The author also emphasizes

that a satisfying organizational performance is linked

to people's efficiency to create new knowledge, share,

and use it for a continuous improvement of the

organization and the individuals involved.

There are unknown standards to share knowledge.

This sharing can vary among both individuals and

companies. They adopt the one that is most effective

and best suited to the requirements of the intended

recipient, depend on the type of task and knowledge

transfer.

Communication plays a significant role within

development teams (Hummel, Rosenkranz, & Holten,

2013; Yague, Garbajosa, Diaz, & Gonzalez, 2016)

once the software development process is knowledge

intensive (Bradshaw, Pulakanam, & Cragg, 2015).

Knowledge is a tacit-asset spreading dynamically

within software development teams which evolves

technology, changes in software development

processes, and organizational culture (Aurum,

Daneshgar, & Ward, 2008). To be useful, the

individual knowledge must be shared, i.e., socialized.

This process requires interaction among team

members through face-to-face communication or

using a technological tool.

Communication can be established using text

messages, photos, and videos through technological

tools (Panahi, Watson, & Partridge, 2016). Although

Pinto D., Garcia K. and TenÃ¸srio N.

Technological Communication Tools in Use - The Shape of Knowledge Shared within Software Development Teams.

DOI: 10.5220/0006503401580166

In Proceedings of the 9th International Joint Conference on Knowledge Discovery, Knowledge Engineering and Knowledge Management (KMIS 2017), pages 158-166

ISBN: 978-989-758-273-8

stored into a tool, knowledge is still composed of tacit

elements which depend on the individual mental

model to be understood and internalized by them.

According to Tenório et al. (2017), development

team members use technological communication

tools (tech-comm-tools) to share project issues

among them. Those contents are related to the

development of techniques, process, bugs, tools, and

so forth. It can happen even when face-to-face

interactions are available. This communication can be

established easily through personal smartphones,

computers, or tablets belonging to development team

members and used by them during working hours.

Considering this background, we highlight

following research question: What is the knowledge

shape shared by software development team through

technological communication tools (tech-comm-

tools)?

Thus, this paper uses an explanatory sequential

mixed method (ESMM) approach. It aims to deepen

findings presented by Tenório et al. (2017) using

interviews with software development experts. This

research becomes relevant because it can encourage

researchers and companies to build a robust

knowledge database based on knowledge-shared

through tech-comm-tools.

The remainder of this paper is structured as

follows. In section 2 is presented the related work.

Section 3 describes the research method. In section 4

are shown the findings regarding tech-comm-tools.

Finally, in section 5, is shown the conclusion drawn

from this paper answering our research question.

2 RELATED WORKS

Software development involves complex tasks with

numerous interacting elements. The knowledge

within the software development teams is driven by

developers’ expertise to produce a finished product

(Ghobadi & Mathiassen, 2016). In this context, the

communication plays an important role in the

software development because it is capable of to

orchestrate the expertise of the team (or individual) to

perform project tasks (Cooper & Sommer, 2016;

Yague et al., 2016). However, the communication in

software development projects is tacit, informal, and

require especial attention for social interaction, i.e., a

face-to-face interaction where good quality of it is

related to tacit knowledge. Thus, both knowledge

tacit and explicit may be common to a group or

divided over individuals involving a complex social

process that shape the knowledge sharing (Ryan &

O’Connor, 2013).

In development teams, knowledge sharing is an

important practice for performing daily-project-tasks.

That offers a creative way to improve

competitiveness and sustainability of the software

development enterprises generating explicit

knowledge. Santos et al. (2015), suggest that the

knowledge exchange is achieved by practices adopted

for socializing individual expertise within

development teams. Licorish and MacDonell (2014)

used content analysis within a software developer

team to identify knowledge sharing behavior, coming

from shared expertise, during textual interaction

among developers. For instance, some software

development method encourages team members to

exchange knowledge among and across them using

different ways. According to Larusdottir et al. (2017),

software development teams are focused on

development speed and communication within them.

Ghobadi and Mathiassen (2016), studied

communication barriers within software development

teams pointing out that knowledge sharing is related

to communication quality. For those authors,

overcoming communication barriers is a way to

spread out knowledge within software development

teams increasing their productivity. Also,

communication problems generate rework and wrong

estimates within software projects. That explains why

the key to increasing the productivity and decrease

misunderstanding is the improvement of team

communication (Cooper & Sommer, 2016). Thus,

raises up new parallel communication channels such

as forums or tweets as an alternative to face-to-face

communication.

Conforto and Amaral (2016) present a framework

capable of facilitating the communication among

development team members. Majumbar et al. (2013)

identified benefits and emerging patterns in

communication using the social software within

software development companies according to

manager’s perceptions. Rola et al. (2016) validated a

model for an office space arrangement to support

software development teams in carrying out project

tasks aiming to improve, among others,

communication feature. That model institutionalizes

the communication arranging it into physical cells.

For instance, face-to-face communication during

‘off-task’ moments occur into specific social space,

such as social kitchen and chill out rooms. In contrast,

phone communication occurs into the conference

and/or relaxation rooms. The formalized spaces

presented by the authors provide knowledge sharing

among software development team members even

though occurring unstructured information exchange.

Software project information such as

documentation, plans, and models, can be exchanged

using tech-comm-tools (Hummel et al., 2013).

According to Daim et al. (2012), a tech-comm-

tools has two main aspects in a software development

project: i) communication planning; ii)

communication channels. The first one regarding

good practices involving information and

communication needs of the project stakeholders. The

second one regarding connections between

stakeholders in a project. Further, communication has

an important role to organize and store organizational

knowledge to be used for tracking purposes and

decision making (Daim et al., 2012). Boh and Wong

(2013) propose the “four-quadrant framework” to

identify unofficial and official communication

mechanisms. Framework quadrants 1 and 4 describe

an expertise shared through unofficial channels,

social activities, and informal document exchanges.

On the other hand, quadrants 2 and 3 describe a

formal knowledge sharing through communities of

practices, dialogue sessions, cross-training,

repositories, and intranet.

Tech-comm-tools provide knowledge sharing

within and across organizations. The knowledge

became explicit since it is shared and stored in

different formats, such as texts, photos, and videos.

Investigate and identify the shape of knowledge

sharing is relevant to create a knowledge database to

be used by organizations. Next section presents the

research method followed by findings and

conclusions.

3 RESEARCH METHOD

This research is an explanatory sequential mixed

method (ESMM) approach. A mixed-method

research combines qualitative and quantitative

elements to explore and investigate a problem. This

provides more liberty to researcher to approach the

problem (Creswell, 2013). According to the author, a

ESMM start by a quantitative research and it is

complemented by a qualitative research.

In the quantitative research, we adopted the

questionnaire suggested by Pinto et al. (2016). This

questionnaire was answered by fifty-one different

software development experts, among them

developers, testers, leaders, and managers, from ten

medium and small-sized Brazilian software

development companies.

The questionnaire contained nineteen questions

regarding knowledge management, processes,

practices, and communication tools. For this paper,

we considered only six questions regarding tech-

comm-tools. They presented in Appendix A of this

document. The questionnaire's objective was to

investigate how often the tech-comm-tools are used

by software development team member. The

questionnaire was rating in five points of the Likert

scale, such as (5) Always, (4) Frequently, (3)

Sometimes, (2) Rarely, and (1) Never (Likert, 1932).

The response time to each questionnaire lasted on

average fifteen minutes.

We arranged questionnaires’ raw data in MS-

Excel and calculated the percentage of the Likert

scale answers (Creswell, 2013).

In the qualitative phase, we interviewed seventeen

different software development experts. All of them

responding the questionnaire in the quantitative

phase. They were selected randomly by availability.

The purpose for this phase was to deepen the findings

resulting from the application of the questionnaire.

The interview protocol was based in the quantitative

phase results. Table 1 shows the interviewees profile.

All interviews were face-to-face and recorded after

obtaining consent from the participants. The

interviewee’s identities were hidden and preserved,

and each interview took around forty minutes. After

that, we transcribed and analyzed the interviews

through six steps suggested by (Creswell, 2013).

Two researchers performed all phases. At the end

of data analysis, a technical report with research

results (phase 4) was written and sent to the

participants.

Table 1: Interviewee profile.

Role

# Interviewee

Tech-comm-tools

used by

Developer

email, Skype, Slack,

Business

Analyst

Tester

email, Skype, Slack

Project

Manager

email, Skype,

4 FINDINGS

The questionnaire results evidenced the frequency

with which tech-comm-tools are used within software

development teams. Figure 1 presents the percentage

of utilization for each type of tech-comm-tool. The

data shows Email, Slack, Skype, and WhatsApp are

the tech-comm-tools more used. Conversely, Forums,

Blogs, FbIM, and SMS do not happen often.

In the following sections, we present the

interviews’ results that aided us in shaping the

knowledge sharing through tech-comm-tolls use by

software development team members.

Figure 1: Percentage of tech-comm-tools use.

4.1 Emails

The email is the most used tech-comm-tool, as shown

in Table 2. Also, the email is a way to formalize

decision taken with clients regarding new

functionalities, date to deliver requests, contract

values, and so on. Thus, the email is used in formal

ways. Interviewees 4 and 12 describe email use in this

context-

INT4: “We always try to formalize the

conversations with our clients via email,

sometimes they call on Skype or phone reporting

system errors and asking for solutions, but this

needs to be registered somewhere, so I send an

email to register it.". (Interview INT4, date

10/03/2017).

INT12: “We following talking by Skype and at the

end, we say: ‘Right, we must formalize it.’. Thus,

we write an email, to register the conversation

and send it to people involved in the decision. That

is necessary because, in the future, can rise some

divergences among us and the email can prove the

decision that was taken.” (Interview INT12, date

06/04/2017).

According to interviewee 8, emails are used for

clients to give their project’s feedback to managers

and development team-

INT8: “Last week our leader sent us an email

reporting that one of our clients was very satisfied

with the project. He said that in the beginning, the

project was terrible (laughs), but the current

releases were very good and with quality.”

(Interview INT8, date 17/03/17).

The interviews revealed that emails are used to

formalize subjects discussed with clients by mean

tech-comm-tools or face-to-face interactions. In

addition, the individual sends formal messages to

company’s departments regarding personal

bureaucratic and administrative issues.

4.2 Slack & Skype

Following email, the interviewees highlight the use of

Slack and Skype. Interviewee 5 describes a

discussion of the possibility to adopt a tool to analyse

and measure code quality by mean Slack use-

INT5: “We discussed new rules and tools to

measure code quality by means Slack. We were

arguing and analyzing what kind of rules and

tools were relevant to be adopted. Our result

satisfied whole group members and was useful to

the company, of course” (Interview INT5, date

10/03/2017).

Nonetheless, Skype is used mainly for meetings

with clients (by video or call) and text messages

exchange among team members, as describes

interviewee 5-

INT5: “(…) when we identify some problem or

divergence requirement, he [home-office

member] is online on the Skype. Then we contact

him by text or call asking him to figure it out. He

answers us and solves quickly our request”

(Interview INT5, date 10/03/2017).

Interviewees emphasize that both tech-comm-

tools provide groups creation (channels in Slack) and

specific topics arrange discussions according to their

needs-

INT11: “Slack permit us to create channels. We

create one channel to improve our project

management communication. Thus, we have some

specifics channels to notify homologation team

and code quality control team regarding issues,

such as bugs or a client request. The code quality

control team, for instance, exchange knowledge

about code standards defined by the group and

advises when standards are deviating from the

group definition (Interview INT11, date

06/04/2017).

INT12: “We have the main group in the Skype

where participate all team members. However,

0% 25% 50% 75% 100%

Slack

Skype

Forums

Blogs

FbIM

SMS

Always Frequently Sometimes Rarely Never

those people also participate in other small

groups. Thus, we have groups to discuss specific

topics. We create groups by topics according to

new needs. We have development groups - divided

by teams-, homologation group, analysts group,

support group, and so on. The communication

occurs more intense within subgroups or small

groups.” (Interview INT12, date 06/04/2017).

Furthermore, according to interviewee 12 Slack

and Skype are used simultaneously by software

development teams-

INT12: “We usually use Slack to solve some doubt

regarding our task. If it is a technical issue, since

I’m a developer, we text it in our developer's

group, such as ‘I have a problem here, do you

guys can help me?’. People see it there; they start

to discuss sometimes the discussion end into

Skype in private, right? Thus, I talk with the

person that is helping me until we get to a point

where the problem is solved and the conversation

ends up” (Interview INT12, date 06/04/2017).

Considering knowledge sharing in Slack and

Skype, the interviewees 5 and 10 reveal subjects

regarding coding, bugs, standards, task assignments,

and task monitoring-

INT5: “We do a lot of things such as, solve coding

issues, define new rules for development, new

standards. We create a new group in the Skype or

new thread in Slack, invite the people, you know?

And everyone gives their suggestions about the

theme of the discussion” (Interview INT5, date

10/03/2017).

INT10: “We have a ‘general’ project group in

which all team members participate. Thus, we

send bugs messages, and everyone can read it,

you know? We try to help members to solve it.

That makes our work easier because if someone

has already gone through this, it can solve it

faster. I always share solutions in our group. Even

if they are situations that I face it, such as bugs, I

share so that the people know how to figure it out

whether they face it. We are using chat a lot

between the team members, even if we were close

to people. We used the chat a lot. Sometimes when

you're doing something, I've found something

interesting, or something to do tasks in a way

that's better that I see... So, I share it.” (Interview

INT10, date 30/03/2017).

Interviewee 6 describes an experience sharing a

photo to show doubt regarding his code and ask for

help in the Skype group-

INT6: “I already took some pictures from my

screen to ask help about my code (or even a

configuration). If I have doubts, for example, I do

that. One picture can say better than text a

message. It is fast to share and intuitive to

understand. I prefer it!” (Interview INT6, date

16/03/2017).

The interviews point out Slack as a tech-comm-

tools toward to discuss specific technical topics

arranged by channels. Conversely, the Skype’s use to

go further Slack use because Skype permits meetings

by videos and calls, media messages (photos and

videos), and screen sharing. Furthermore, Skype is an

enabler tech-comm-tools between local and home-

office teams for the most projects.

4.3 WhatsApp

The most famous tech-comm-tools is WhatsApp. It is

available through personal devices mainly

smartphones and has more than 1 billion users around

the world. In spite of some companies forbid

WhatsApp use during work hours, we observed

employees working with the personal smartphones

beside them.

That behavior confirms the reason why Table 2

shows WhatsApp in fourth place, as following

interview 1 statement-

INT1: “We have Whatsapp group, and we use it.

We don’t use it to work, but sometimes somebody

text asking something related to work. Also, we

text some work's notices.” (Interview INT1, date

10/03/2017).

The interviewee 2 describes his experience with

WhatsApp. He uses it to ask help in development

group regarding a component in software

development tool (Eclipse IDE)-

INT2: “Once, I’d a doubt about the use of a

component in Eclipse IDE. So, I texted my

problem in our WhatsApp group. Past five

minutes, the solution was sent in the group.”

(Interview INT2, date 10/03/2017).

We observed a technical support situation by

mean WhatsApp, as describes the interviewee 3-

INT3: “Before yesterday, while I was lying down

on my bed, one of our clients texted me in my

Whatsapp 11:30 P.M. asking me that something

was ‘broken’ in the system and he lost all system

database. Thus, I turned on my laptop, and I

answered that all his database still was there (…).

I still told him to calm down because I identified

the issue and the next morning I’ll prioritize it.”

(Interview INT3, date 16/03/2017).

As observed in Skype and Slack use, the

WhatsApp is arranged by groups. However, the

majority interviewees described participating in a

single WhatsApp workgroup to discuss several topics

both work and funny things (e.g. videos, pictures,

gifs). The project managers reported that as healthy

behavior because it provides relaxing time and

improves interaction among its members. WhatsApp

groups also are used to schedule happy hours, parties,

and barbecues. Thus, we notice the WhatsApp use

just in personal smartphones, while Skype and Slack

are used in company’s laptops.

4.4 Forums, Blogs, FbIM, SMS

According to interviewees’ narratives, there is a low-

use of Forums and Blogs. The reason is why the long

response time in that tools. Furthermore, they

highlight feel more “comfortable” trying to take out

doubts first by mean groups in instant messaging

tools, such as Skype and WhatsApp. Forums and

Blogs are used to take out doubts regarding

development tools, process, and practices. Also, we

observed enterprise’s policies to encourage team

members to participate in Forums and Blogs during

work hours.

Software development teams do not frequently

use FbIM and SMS. The interviewees reported that

the Facebook’s use is forbidden because “distract and

disturb” the workplace. Also, SMS has a cost, and it

is not cheap. According to interviewees, it is used in

the emergency case to talk to a client or team member

that is not online at the moment in the instant

messaging tool.

4.5 The Pitfalls of Tech-comm-Tools

Tech-comm-tools presented some pitfalls as

interviewees 5 and 6 describe-

INT5: “The communication can fail. I mean, you

think that people understood the message, but they

didn’t. Thus, you cannot check this out, and it

becomes a mess.” (Interview INT5, date

10/03/2017).

INT6: “When you are texting a message, you can

lose some important information, such as physical

posture of the person who you are texting. If you

look into his/her eyes, you can observe if this

person is nervous, calm, and so on.

Communication tools is a hard way to identify that

and create empathy among people (…) It maybe

requires control and people awareness because

the focus of the communication must be on work

and not on personal issues” (Interview INT6, date

16/03/2017).

Therefore, considering software development

context, we observed three pitfalls: i) it does not

create empathy among people; ii) it can cause

communication misunderstanding; iii) it can cause

deviate work-focus because personal messages might

be exchanged.

5 RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS

Tech-comm-tools is an alternative tool that provides

a fast communication with low-cost. Furthermore, it

also allows their users to store and retrieve

information that can become knowledge to be used to

them during the project performance, as describes

interviewee 7 –

INT7: “Nowadays, digital communication is

much better than traditional one, such as face-to-

face. The reason is that it can avoid future issues,

for instance, somebody says: ‘I didn’t know about

that!’ (…). Then, you can show the subject: ‘I told

you on this date/hour’” (Interview INT7, date

16/03/2017).

In this sense, our findings point out that the

knowledge sharing in software development teams

through tech-comm-tools can be shaped in

Notification, Issues, Support clients, Socialization,

and their subjects.

Notification is the knowledge shared by team

members to inform the group about some subject

matter. We observed following subjects in this

category:

 Standards: group members draw attention to

keep or define new standards for the code,

names of files, documents, and requests;

 Delivery reminders: group members make

aware of delivery and important dates of client

requests;

 Change of plans: warn group members about

the change of plans, such as a request to be

delivered.

Issues are the knowledge sharing by team

members to ask help about following subjects:

 System errors: group members report errors

occurred during system execution. These errors

are investigated by owner of code, i.e., who

developed it;

 Doubts: they report doubts about installation

and tools use, business rules, and standards

adopted. Some pictures are sent in the group to

facilitate the comprehension.

Support to clients knowledge sharing happens

when a group member is contacted individually by a

client that has its contact. Thus, we observe following

subjects:

 Training: to learn a new functionality to the

client (user). That occurs sharing videos;

 Bug report: the client (user) send an image to

his contact asking and “showing” a

misunderstood message. That occurs sharing

photos.

Usually, a Support Bug report can generate an

Issue System error. It can happen when the individual

contacted by a client unknown a solution to Support

Bug report. Thus, the individual share the bug in a

group asking for help.

Socialization is a peculiar category because it

involves various subjects not related to the previous

categories. Also, those groups are not available to

clients. Thus, socialization is not a formal way to

knowledge sharing, i.e., it does not happen through

official tech-comm-tools, such as email, Slack, or

Skype. Instead of that, it happens by personal

smartphone. We notice following subjects:

 Exchange of experience and viewpoints: group

members freely expose their opinions about

policies, programming languages, processes,

databases, poems, texts, and so on. Also, they

exchange previous work and life experiences;

 Information disseminating: group members

recommend books, movies, links, tools, foods,

drinks, and places.

 Funny things: they send funny photos, videos,

audio, gifs, and jokes.

Table 2: The shape of knowledge sharing.

Category

Subject

Tech-comm-tools

Notification

Standards;

Delivery

reminders;

Change of plans

email, Slack,

Skype, WhatsApp

Issues

System errors;

Doubts

Slack, Skype,

Support to

clients

Trainning; Bug

report

Skype,

Socialization

Exchange of

experience and

viewpoints;

Information

disseminating;

Funny things

The shape of knowledge sharing is presented and

summarized in Table 2. The tech-comm-tools used to

notify team members is email, Slack, Skype, and

WhatsApp. Slack, Skype, and WhatsApp are used to

discuss technical issues with both clients and team

members. Client support is performed through Skype

and WhatsApp. Finally, the socialization is

performed just through WhatsApp.

6 CONCLUSIONS

The objective of this paper investigated the shape of

the knowledge shared by software development

teams through tech-comm-tools use. The research

was performed in two phases. The first phase was

based on a questionnaire and the second phase was

based on seventeen interviews with software

development experts from ten different companies.

We observed that email, Slack, Skype, and

WhatsApp as the most tech-comm-tools. We found

out that email, Slack, Skype, Blogs, and Forums is

considered official tech-comm-tools for the most

companies. Conversely, WhatsApp, FbIM, SMS are

considered unofficial tech-comm-tools.

The interviews revealed that the tech-comm-tools

provide an easy communication among and across

team members. Furthermore, it promotes, knowledge

sharing, storage, and retrieval. However, the

interviews also revealed some tech-comm-tools

pitfalls, such as: i) they do not create empathy among

people; ii) they can generate communication

misunderstanding; iii) they can deviate work-focus

from team members.

The main contribution here is the shape of

knowledge shared by software development team

members. Thus, we notice that the knowledge is

divided into four main categories and different

subjects according to tech-comm-tools related to

them.

Identifying the shape of the knowledge shared

within software development team through tech-

comm-tools is relevant to create an integrated

organizational knowledge database.

The next step of this research is to investigate the

shape of knowledge shared through tech-comm-tools

within software development team in public sector.

We intend to compare the findings to improve our

actual results. Also, we suggest to investigate others

tech-comm-tools, such as Evernote, Wunderlist, and

Trello also revealed in our interviews data.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Our special thanks to Instituto Cesumar de Ciência,

Tecnologia e Inovação (ICETI) – Maringá – Paraná

– Brasil. We also thanks to Programa de Suporte à

Pós-Graduação de Instituições de Ensino

Particulares (PROSUP) da CAPES (Coordenação de

Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior) that

provide master’s scholarship; to Fundação Nacional

de Desenvolvimento do Ensino Superior Particular

(Funadesp), that provide an undergraduate

scholarship; to Software by Maringá (SbM) entity

that aided us to contact the companies; and finally to

all companies and their workers, that gently accepted

to participate as a volunteer in this research.

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APPENDIX

This appendix presents part of the questionnaire

applied within software development companies and

full interview protocol regarding tech-comm-tools

use.

A. QUESTIONNAIRE

Question: How often do you use technological

communication tools to knowledge sharing with your

software development team members?

1. Email: