Asymmetries of Knowledge Between Engineering and Marketing in Software Product Development
Mikko Rönkkö, Markus M. Mäkelä · European Conference on Information Systems · 2008
This paper reports the results of an inductive case study about asymmetries of knowledge between marketing and engineering subunits in firms engaged in software product development. The asymmetries of technical and user related knowledge are salient to software since the artifact itself is invisible and complex, and have been previously reported as a key challenge in product oriented software development. We use qualitative interview data from six firms using multiple informant design. The analysis follows the constant comparison method where the initial constructs were defined ex ante, but their exact relationship and the moderating constructs were derived from the data. We found that not only is there a strong asymmetry of what the focal units know, but that this has an effect on software product development performance. Our analysis suggests that the negative effects of knowledge asymmetry are negatively moderated by presence of a strong boundary spanning individual and also suppressed by organizational change.