Like all teams, knowledge teams must acquire and manage critical resources
in order to accomplish their work. The most critical resource for knowledge
teams is expertise, or specialized skills and knowledge, but the mere pres
ence of expertise on a team is insufficient to produce high-quality work. E
xpertise must be managed and coordinated in order to leverage its potential
. That is, teams must be able to manage their skill and knowledge interdepe
ndencies effectively through expertise coordination, which entails knowing
where expertise is located, knowing where expertise is needed, and bringing
needed expertise to bear. This study investigates the importance of expert
ise coordination through a cross-sectional investigation of 69 software dev
elopment teams. The analysis reveals that expertise coordination shows a st
rong relationship with team performance that remains significant over and a
bove team input characteristics, presence of expertise, and administrative
coordination.