Using wikis to support architectural knowledge management in global software development

Abstract

In the past few years, the software architecture community has shown an increasing interest in architectural knowledge. In Global Software Development (GSD), software engineering practices are performed at geographically separate locations. With this trend, the management of architectural knowledge becomes even more important due to the geographical, temporal, and socio-cultural distance involved with GSD. Practices for architectural knowledge management in global software development may alleviate challenges associated with this distance. In this paper, we identify to what extent these practices may be implemented using wikis. We relate the practices to generic wiki functionalities and conclude that wikis form a good mechanism to implement a hybrid strategy for managing architectural knowledge in global software development and that a substantial part of the AKM practices may be implemented using wikis.