Distributed Software Development with Knowledge Experience Packages

In software production process, a lot of knowledge is created and remain silent. Therefore, it cannot be reused to improve the effectiveness and the efficiency of these processes. This problem is amplified in the case of a distributed production. In fact, distributed software development requires complex context specific knowledge regarding the particularities of different technologies, the potential of existing software, the needs and expectations of the users. This knowledge, which is gained during the project execution, is usually tacit and is completely lost by the company when the production is completed. Moreover, each time a new production unit is hired, despite the diversity of culture and capacity of people, it is necessary to standardize the working skills and methods of the different teams if the company wants to keep the quality level of processes and products. In this context, we used the concept of Knowledge Experience Package (KEP), already specified in previous works and the tool realized to support KEP approach. In this work, we have carried out an experiment in an industrial context in which we compared the software development supported by KEPs with the development achieved without it.