Knowledge sharing in a large agile organisation: A survey study

Abstract

Knowledge is a core resource for agile organisations that is transformed into products and services during the development process. Sharing of knowledge is essential across any organisation, and it has been claimed that the software industry requires more knowledge management than any other sector. Agile methodologies concentrate on team level collaboration, and some techniques for inter-team knowledge sharing have also proved to be successful. But these techniques focus on within-team and between-team knowledge sharing rather than knowledge sharing across the organisation. This paper presents the results of a survey with 81 responses on organisational knowledge sharing in a multinational agile company. The survey focuses on three aspects of knowledge sharing: within agile teams, beyond the team with company colleagues, and with customers. It concentrates on knowledge sharing practices, ease of knowledge sharing and motivation for knowledge sharing. Summary statistics, regression, and test of equity are used as analysis techniques. Results show that knowledge sharing with team members is significantly easier than with customers or company colleagues beyond their team. In addition, using agile practices improves ease of knowledge sharing within teams but not with customers or colleagues. Extrinsic motivators need to be in place to encourage knowledge sharing across the organisation, especially where such knowledge sharing is not an automatic consequence of completing the work.