Learning at distance in global software development

One of the trends in software development has been offshoring work to locations that exist geographically far from the parent company, known as global software development (GSD). This has led to new learning challenges because organizations and their people have to collaborate and learn from each other without having face-to-face contact. Learning at work is one of the key issues in a competitive company. Learning issues arise especially in knowledge-intensive software companies, where the employees are the main capital. As software development projects are distributed globally, competencies according to projects also need to be distributed. In situations of this kind, collaborative tools and new methods are needed. This paper focuses on learning in the context of GSD between different sites that are located far from each other. The paper introduces the competence transfer model of a case company in a learning context. The paper discusses the key issues related to successful learning at distance. The research has been run by the Tampere University of Technology.