The problem of knowledge decoupling in software development projects

Abstract

In our ethnographic investigation of software integration projects a recurrent pattern emerges. The detailed understanding leaders have of the design and development decreases over time as they become busier and busier attending meetings, creating documents, and resolving issues and thus cannot spend much time on design or development work. As a result, their leadership becomes increasingly decoupled from the work of the project. We discuss various dimensions of this problem.