Knowledge Sharing in an Agile Organization

The goal of this paper is to identify fields requiring improvement in "organizational knowledge sharing" in an agile organizations. It has been proven that "agile methods" highly facilitate "knowledge sharing" in a project team. Agile development allows a productive, flexible, and adaptive environment, when limitations of knowledge sharing are important. Knowledge is an important resource for agile organisations. This knowledge is transformed into products and services during the development process. Knowledge sharing is essential throughout any organisation. Knowledge creates the value for the organisation and this value increases when it is shared. Organisational knowledge sharing aims at transferring to the organisation the information, skills and expertise a person or team has. Nowadays, "agile development methods" have attracted particular attention in the software development community. Agile development approaches rely on socialization through communication and collaboration to access and share tacit knowledge within project teams. However, implementing knowledge sharing is not an easy task for agile development teams compared to its increased demand. The main benefit of Agile Project Management is its ability to respond to issues as they arise throughout the course of the project. Making a necessary change to a project at the right time can save resources and, ultimately, help deliver a successful project on time and within budget. Agile project methodology breaks down projects into small pieces that are completed in work sessions that run from the design phase to testing and quality assurance. These sessions are called "sprints", the term for iteration used in one specific and popular agile development method known as "scrum". In this paper, we will explore the role that "knowledge sharing" plays in agile organizations. We will review agile methods and agile practices available in the literature improving "organizational knowledge sharing" in an agile company and finally, review survey knowledge sharing techniques for agile software engineering. The development of the survey will be an object for another paper.