Software Engineering at Google

Chapter 3. Knowledge Sharing

Written by Nina Chen and Mark Barolak

Edited by Riona MacNamara

Your organization understands your problem domain better than some random person on the internet; your organization should be able to answer most of its own questions. To achieve that, you need both experts who know the answers to those questions and mechanisms to distribute their knowledge, which is what we’ll explore in this chapter. These mechanisms range from the utterly simple (Ask questions; Write down what you know) to the much more structured, such as tutorials and classes. Most importantly, however, your organization needs a culture of learning, and that requires creating the psychological safety that permits people to admit to a lack of knowledge.

Challenges to Learning

Sharing expertise across an organization is not an easy task. Without a strong culture of learning, challenges can emerge. Google has experienced a number of these challenges, especially as the company has scaled:

Lack of psychological safety

An environment in which people are afraid to take risks or make mistakes in front of others because they fear being punished for it. This often manifests as a culture of fear or a tendency to avoid transparency.

Information islands

Knowledge fragmentation that occurs in different parts of an organization that don’t communicate with one another or use shared resources. In such an environment, each group develops its own way of doing things.¹ This often leads to the following: ...