Social networks in software process improvement

Software process improvement in small organisation is often problematic and communication and knowledge sharing is more informal. To improve software processes we need to understand how they communicate and share knowledge. In this article have studied the company SmallSoft through action research. In the action research we have applied the framework of social network analysis and we show this can be used to understand the underlying structures of communication and knowledge sharing between software developers and managers. We show in detail how the analysis can be done and how the management can utilise the findings. From this we conclude that social network analysis was a useful framework together with accompanying tools and techniques. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.