== MOTIVATION ==

The increasing number of distributed software development projects – in particular in the Open Source field, as well as the success of agile development methodologies raise new challenges for collaboration and knowledge sharing for software teams:

• Distributed development hinders knowledge sharing because of reduced communication bandwidth. Despite progress in communication technology, distributed teams have less context information and encounter more awareness difficulties. Research has shown that distributed teams are less efficient than collocated ones.
• Agile methodologies embrace tight collaboration and informal communication, manifesting in practices such as frequent Scrum meetings or pair programming. These practices dismiss “unnecessary” formal overhead like extensive documentation.

Traditional centralized knowledge management solutions fail to address these challenges. They require large upfront configuration and investment as well as stable, long-term environments. However, in dynamic software projects, developers avoid spending extra effort for following formal and extensive knowledge management policies. Knowledge Management methods and tools have to adapt themselves with the current development practices.

In this workshop we will explore enablers of new, agile approaches for coordination and knowledge sharing in distributed teams. Major topics addressed at the workshop are (but not limited to):

• Lightweight and unobtrusive tools for knowledge capture and sharing in distributed teams.
• Methods for supporting knowledge sharing in agile and/or distributed development teams.
• Observation tools and frameworks for context awareness.
• Tools for intelligent developer assistance, such as search and recommendation tools.
• Empirical studies of developers’ collaboration and information behaviour.
• Scientific analysis of the relation between agile processes and knowledge management (e.g. witch activities in agile processes enable knowledge capture and sharing).

== SUBMISSION ==

Position, tool-demonstration and experience papers (max 5 pages) are equally welcome for the workshop. They can be submitted at www.aknowledge.org. Accepted contributions will be published in the GI-Edition „Lecture Notes in Informatics".

Papers must follow the instructions and templates provided under http://www.gi-ev.de/service/publikationen/lni/

At least one author should participate at the workshop and register for the SE2008 conference.

== DEADLINES ==

21.01.2008 Deadline for the submission of contributions
28.01.2008 Review feedback
03.02.2008 Submission of the camera-ready version
19.02.2008 Workshop

== ORGANISATION ==

Walid Maalej, Technische Universität München
Hans-Jörg Happel, FZI Forschungszentrum Informatik Karlsruhe

== WEBSITE ==

http://www.aknowledge.org