Social ties, knowledge sharing and successful collaboration in globally distributed system development projects

Traditionally, the main focus of the information system (IS) literature has been on technical aspects related to system development projects. Furthermore, research in the IS field has mainly focused on co-located project teams. In this respect, social aspects involved in IS projects were neglected or scarcely reported. To fill this gap, this paper studies the contribution of social ties and knowledge sharing to successful collaboration in distributed IS development teams. Data were drawn from two successful globally distributed system development projects at SAP and LeCroy. Data collected were codified using Atlas.ti software. The results suggest that human-related issues, such as rapport and transactive memory, were important for collaborative work in the teams studied. The paper concludes by discussing the implications for theory and suggesting a practical guide to enhance collaborative work in globally distributed teams.