Knowledge Sharing Software and Platforms for Development Teams

Every development team has that one team member who knows the codebase inside out. After all, they probably wrote half of it.

What happens if that person decides to hand in their two weeks’ notice? 

If you don’t have a knowledge sharing platform in place, all their knowledge leaves with them.

What’s more, onboarding new employees is a case of drowning them in documentation on how to set up their environment and how the codebase is structured and hoping they swim.

Knowledge sharing software changes all that. Read on to discover the best knowledge sharing platforms for dev teams – and the keys to getting your programmers to buy in to using them.

What is knowledge sharing software?

A knowledge sharing platform is a piece of software that hosts all your organization’s important institutional knowledge in the cloud. It empowers your teammates to access all the SOPs, meeting notes, and codebases they need to do their job – as well as update them when they become outdated.

Knowledge sharing software is particularly useful for developers, as it allows them to trace back the thinking behind changes to the codebase, helping them solve problems more quickly.

What does a knowledge sharing platform do?

Getting your team set up with effective knowledge sharing software is the first step towards creating SOPs and building workflows that will boost their productivity.

Instead of staying trapped inside your employees’ heads, important institutional knowledge gets recorded for everybody in your company to access whenever they need it and update in real-time. 

That might sound simple, but it can have a huge impact on your bottom line.

In fact:

• Employees spend an average of 5.3 hours each week waiting for information they need to make progress on a project they're working on.
• Businesses with 1,000 employees lose a massive $2.7 million in lost productivity each year because of inefficient knowledge sharing – and that rises to at least $31.5 billion a year for Fortune 500 companies.
• 36% of employees find it hard to exchange information across different teams, leading to silos. 

A knowledge sharing platform is the first step to solving all those problems and making your dev team more productive. 

The best knowledge sharing software for development teams

Looking to arm your dev team with tools with knowledge sharing tools tailored to their exact needs? Here are our top picks:

GitHub

GitHub is most companies' go-to code repository – and for good reason. 

GitHub is free knowledge sharing software that makes it easy for dev teams to share and review code and manage software projects. It’s ubiquitous in the dev world, so it’s unlikely any new employees are going to have to get up to speed with it on the job. And since it’s a cloud-based platform, each of your team will always be working from the current version of the codebase.

As far as free knowledge sharing software for developers goes, you can’t look past GitHub. Combined with an effective project management software tool and it has almost everything modern dev teams need to get software projects over the line.  

Assembly

Other than a code repository like GitHub, Assembly is the only team knowledge sharing software dev teams need. 

It arms your teammates with all the tools they need to collaborate on projects, keep updated on the latest developments in your company, and access all the information they need to do their jobs with a few clicks of their mouse.

We designed Assembly to be one of the best ways of knowledge sharing in virtual software development teams. For example:

• Our free standup meeting, daily/weekly agenda, and team retrospective templates make agile methodology easy to implement.
• Our internal wiki template and knowledge base templates make it easy for your team to document and update SOPs and essential company info.
• Our workplace news feed, meeting notes, and project feed templates help make sure your whole organization is singing from the same hymn sheet.

Getting your dev team set up on knowledge sharing collaboration software like Assembly can throw rocket fuel on their productivity – not to mention avoid institutional knowledge being lost when teammates choose to move on.

Zoom and Loom

Every remote and hybrid dev team needs two bits of company knowledge sharing software: Zoom and Loom. 

Zoom is perfect for daily stand-ups, sprint retrospectives, and one-to-one meetings. And Loom is ideal for async communication, like recording a quick walkthrough of a process or an explanation of the thought process behind a feature. 

These two simple tools alone can do wonders for streamlining knowledge sharing in agile software teams.

The key to effective knowledge sharing in software development 

Picking the right tools is only half the battle. Here are the keys to successfully implementing a knowledge sharing platform with your programmers:

Incentivize knowledge sharing

Let’s face it – software developers can get stuck in their ways. They all have their favorite languages and their favorite ways of doing things, and getting them to change the way they do things is often an uphill battle.

But if you want to capture the knowledge from that one coder who knows everything about your product, you’re going to have to find a way to get them to engage with your corporate knowledge sharing software.

The secret? Recognition.

Sounds too simple, right? Well, did you know 40% of employed Americans say they'd put more energy into their work if they were recognized more often? And 70% of employees say that motivation and morale would improve “massively” if managers simply said “thank you” more?

We crave recognition so much we even respond to praise from a robot. When electronic systems were installed that immediately praised hospital employees for using hand sanitiser, the number of staff who regularly washed their hands rose from 10% to 90%. 

So, be sure to reward the members of your dev team for adding their knowledge to your company wiki and creating SOPs. This doesn’t have to be anything lavish or complicated, either – a simple, thoughtful, and imaginative reward can go a long way.

Implement pair programming 

Project management knowledge sharing software can do wonders for your programmers’ productivity. But you shouldn’t treat it as a replacement for face-to-face training.

Here’s the thing: people learn faster when they're taught by an expert. Studies have shown teams learn a new process faster if someone already familiar with it walks them through it in-person rather than just documenting their knowledge and sharing that with them.

With this in mind, pair programming can be a great way to get new team members up to speed quickly. It might produce half the work in the same amount of time in the short-term. However, it will get your new programmers familiar with your codebase as fast as possible, since they’ll be able to talk through any stumbling blocks they encounter with their teammate there and then.

Make code reviews common practice

Code reviews are another invaluable knowledge sharing exercise for both new and established members of your dev team.

They’re a great way to onboard new employees, as it gives them hands-on experience with how things are done at your company and gets them familiar with the coding style they’ll be working in. It might also give them some ideas they can implement in their own work.

Plus, a fresh pair of eyes can often spot a bug or a potential weak point in a piece of code. And someone who’s fresh to your organization and reviewing the code without any previous knowledge or preexisting biases is the best placed to spot those weaknesses.

The final word

Knowledge sharing software can supercharge your dev team’s productivity and make onboarding new programmers a cinch. Plus, it makes it easy to capture all your teammates’ important institutional knowledge so it isn’t lost when they move on to another role.

Follow the tips we’ve outlined here to pick the perfect knowledge sharing software for your dev team and make sure they buy into it as much as possible.