Knowledge Management Strategies and Processes in Agile Software Development: A Systematic Literature Review
Journal article, 2019

Knowledge-intensive companies that adopt Agile Software Development (ASD) rely on efficient implementation of Knowledge Management (KM) strategies to promote different Knowledge Processes (KPs) to gain competitive advantage. This study aims to explore how companies that adopt ASD implement KM strategies utilizing practices that promote the KPs in the different organizational layers. Through a systematic literature review, we analyzed 32 primary studies, selected by automated search and snowballing in the extant literature. To analyze the data, we applied narrative synthesis. Most of the identified KM practices implement personalization strategies (81%), supported by codification (19%). Our review shows that the primary studies do not report KM practices in the strategic layer and two of them in the product portfolio layer; on the other hand, in the project layer, the studies report 33 practices that implement personalization strategy, and seven practices that implement codification. KM strategies in ASD promote mainly the knowledge transfer process with practices that stimulates social interaction to share tacit knowledge in the project layer. As a result of using informal communication, a significant amount of knowledge can be lost or not properly transferred to other individuals and, instead of propagating the knowledge, it remains inside a few individuals' minds.

agile software development

knowledge processes

Knowledge management

Author

Raquel Ouriques

Blekinge Tekniska Högskola, BTH

Krzysztof Wnuk

Blekinge Tekniska Högskola, BTH

Tony Gorschek

Blekinge Tekniska Högskola, BTH

Richard Berntsson Svensson

Blekinge Tekniska Högskola, BTH

University of Gothenburg

International Journal of Software Engineering and Knowledge Engineering

0218-1940 (ISSN)

Vol. 29 3 00153

Subject Categories

Business Administration

Communication Studies

Information Systemes, Social aspects

DOI

10.1142/S0218194019500153

More information

Latest update

9/14/2021