How do newcomers learn work process in Global Software Development (GSD)? : A survey study from the perspective of newly project leaders

Global Software Development has brought many benefits to the industry. On the other hand, it carries with it new challenges mostly regarding knowledge transfer. When new hires join a company, they should learn about the working process, organization structure and company corporate culture. Therefore, companies should be adopting strategies to manage and transfer knowledge to better support newcomers as well as to hire new members to increase the developer team due to massive demand. As we work in GSD scope, we use Wiki as an alternative for sharing knowledge and for helping newcomers learn about our software development process. However, newer members reported great difficulty during Wiki usage, due to a large amount of information, lack of information process and non-structural knowledge sharing. For this reason, we surveyed to understand which difficulties newer PLs members faced during wiki usage at Sidia R&D Institute. The results show important contributions to understand how their learning work process, difficulties to access wiki information caused by usability issues and knowledge management adequate. Despite it, one important finding is that Wiki did informal aid learning, but there is still plenty of room for improvement.