Enhancing Software Development Teams’ Client Awareness: An Empirical Study of Its Impact on Productivity

Abstract

In the software industry, a critical factor in a project’s success is raising productivity, and software development teams must always consider its challenges. In today’s competitive industry, the productivity of team members in software development is a serious issue that attracts considerable attention. Studies have been conducted on various aspects of team and individual productivity; however, the literature still refers to a lack of research into the impact of team awareness, observing that it is an essential element of knowledge management in the project’s development life cycle. This study takes up this point and presents an actual software development case study to investigate the impact of increasing knowledge and producing adequate information on clients’ domain and business model on both team productivity and that of each individual member. The study was undertaken with two development teams over one month, each receiving about 300 requirements. One of the teams was given sufficient information on the client’s domain and background in terms of its business model, while the other was given nothing before it went to the client’s workplace, without any knowledge of its domain. The results achieved were statistically significant, showing better productivity among the team with the information, with 261 of 300 requirements completed, whereas the other completed just 107. The findings of this study will help software research to focus both on the aspects of knowledge management that relate to software development and on the correlation between them. The study also supports software development project managers to enhance the value of knowledge when they are delivering training and to equate the time spent spreading knowledge to giving team members adequate information about the clients’ domains and business models. This will be reflected in both the quality and productivity of the entire development process.