Thinking strategically about knowledge management in agile software development

Paper in proceeding, 2018

Agile methodologies gave teams more autonomy regarding planning tasks and executing them. As a result, coordination gets more flexible, but much relevant knowledge remains undocumented and inside teams’ borders, due to informal communication and reduced development documentation. Since knowledge plays an essential role in software development, it is important to have effective knowledge management (KM) practices that contribute to a better knowledge resource allocation. Several KM practices have been reported in empirical studies in Agile Software Development (ASD). However, these practices are not evaluated regarding its effectiveness or how do they affect product quality. Besides, the studies do not demonstrate connections between the KM practices in the project level and the strategic level. The lack of connection between these levels can result in deviations from the company’s corporate strategy, wasted resources and irrelevant knowledge acquisition. This paper discusses how the strategic management can contribute to an integrated approach to KM in ASD; considering the organizational structure and the corporate strategy. Based on this discussion, we propose research areas that may help with planning KM strategies that can have their effectiveness measured and contribute to product quality.