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Agile knowledge management: a survey of Indian perceptions

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Agile knowledge management: a survey of
Indian perceptions

Amitoj Singh, Kawaljeet Singh & Neeraj

Sharma

Innovations in Systems and Software

Engineering
A NASA Journal

ISSN 1614-5046
Volume 10
Number 4

Innovations Syst Softw Eng (2014)

10:297-315
DOI 10.1007/s11334-014-0237-z

1 23
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1 23
 Author's personal copy
Innovations Syst Softw Eng (2014) 10:297–315
DOI 10.1007/s11334-014-0237-z
ORIGINAL PAPER
Agile knowledge management: a survey of Indian perceptions
Amitoj Singh · Kawaljeet Singh · Neeraj Sharma
Received: 3 January 2013 / Accepted: 24 June 2014 / Published online: 23 July 2014
© Springer-Verlag London 2014
Abstract This paper is a pivot step to find out the level
of KM adoption of Indian software organizations which are
using agile practices for software development. After review-
ing the literature it was found although many practitioners
believe that KM practices are embodied in agile methodolo-
gies but it is not documented efficiently. Survey was used
to take perception of agile organizations. KM practices are
grouped into seven factors and respondents are taken from
Indian software industry. Organizations are divided into dif-
ferent demographics: size, core area, type. Different statisti-
cal tests are used to conclude outputs of the questionnaire.
It is found that Indian software industry working with agile
practices lacks in providing any formal head for KM posi-
tioning. Learning and sharing through discussion forms is
the most used practices among all respondents of organiza-
tions, whereas least accepted practice is dependent upon doc-
uments for transfer of knowledge. Indian organizations also
lack in appointing a formal head who can provide guidelines
for agile practice.
Keywords Agile software development · Knowledge
management · Scrum · KM practices · Knowledge sharing ·
Extreme programming
1 Introduction: agile and its philosophy
In recent years, confusion about the discipline’s identity grew
with the growth of agile methodologies. Agile methodolo-
gies are often presented as the solution to the ills that the
methodology movement created. Agile methodologies seek
A. Singh (B) · K. Singh · N. Sharma
Rajpura, India
e-mail: amitoj@mail.com
to take software development along a totally different trajec-
tory than that it has followed for the past 40 years. Since
the first NATO conference, the prevailing belief was that
imposing discipline and rigor upon software development
would make this activity more predictable and more effi-
cient. In 1998, the word ‘agile’ was used in combination
with ‘software process’ for the first time [3]. Agile method-
ologies (AM) promote the use of cross-functional and self-
organizing teams. Such teams put together individuals who
are able to perform all roles. From a practical viewpoint,
agile methodologies come out from a common discovery
among practitioners that their practice had slowly float away
from the heavy document and process-centered development
approaches to more people-centered and less document-
driven approaches [6,7,12,16]. Schuh [25] presents précis
of agile development by stating that agile practices are not
new, what is different and original about the agile approach
is that the agile alliance has published these practices, fused
them with core values about people and project environments
and stated the way to build software better. While agile prac-
tices may differ a little according to specific agile method-
ologies, there exist fundamental agile practices that are based
on the four agile values and twelve principles and are com-
mon to all agile methodologies (for more detail see http://
www.agilemanifesto.org). Table 1 shows four values of agile
manifesto tagged with different practices of agile method-
ologies.
Abrahamsson et al. [1] develop an evolutionary map of
existing agile methodologies. The antecedent methods and
major influences on each of the agile methods are avail-
able in an evolutionary map (Fig. 1). Analysis of their
study found four main influences on agile software devel-
opment: object-orientation, evolutionary development, inter-
net technologies, and methodology engineering [26] and
practices from software engineering. In the second edi-
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298 A. Singh et al.

Table 1 Mapping of agile practices with manifesto

Agile values XP Scrum FDD ASD DSDM

Individuals and The planning game Scrum teams Domain object Adaptive Active user
interactions modeling management involvement
over processes model
and tools Collective Ownership Sprint planning meeting Individual class Collaborative Empowered
ownership teams teams
On-site customer Daily scrum meeting Feature return Joint application Collaboration
development and
by independent cooperation
agents among
stakeholders
Pair programming Inspection Customer focus
group reviews
Working Short releases Sprint Developing by Developing by Frequent product
software over feature components delivery
comprehensive
Testing Sprint review Inspection Software Iterative and
documentation
inspection incremental
Continuous integration Regular builds Project Integrated testing
postmortem
Reporting/visibility
of results
Customer The planning game Product backlog Domain object Adaptive Collaboration
collaboration modeling management and
over contract model cooperation
negotiation among
stakeholders
On-site customer Sprint planning meeting Joint application Requirements are
development baselines at a
high level
Responding to Metaphor Sprint review Domain object Adaptive cycle Reversible
change over modeling planning changes
following a
Simple design Sprint planning meeting Configuration Customer focus
plan
management group reviews
Refactoring
Coding standards

tion of Extreme Programming: Embrace Change [5], Kent
Beck quotes that “Agile is about social change”. What is
new about agile methodology is not the practices they use,
but their recognition of people as the main driving force
which can lead to project success. Agile is a practice-driven
and communication-centric paradigm which highlights the
importance of better communication within the development
team and closer contact between developers and their cus-
tomers.
Agilists acknowledge that knowledge sharing among
organizational members is the most important and challeng-
ing means to increase value of knowledge utilization. Agile
methodologies transformed the way developers learn about
the software product. For instance, agile methodologies dis-
courage the use of formal documentation. The knowledge
about the product becomes tacit and transfers of knowledge
take place when rotation of team members has been done in
different phases throughout the project [18].
The transfer of knowledge between developers and cus-
tomers may involve inter-organizational knowledge transfer.
These concerns emphasize on the need to understand the fac-
tors that can contribute to the creation, retention and transfer
of knowledge. It is a common saying among agilists that
various practices of knowledge management are embedded
in different practices of agile methodologies (e.g., pair pro-
gramming, customer collaboration, scrum meetings, cross-
functional teams etc). Thus, it is of practical significance to
examine acceptance of agile methodologies from a knowl-
edge management perspective.
2 Agile knowledge management
According to the agile development idea, the working system
is the best way to judge how much the team has achieved. If
documents are not up to date, they are useless, so the agile

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Agile knowledge management
Fig. 1 Evolutionary map of agile methodologies (Abrahamsson et al. [1])
recommends producing no documents unless the need for
them is immediate and significant. The team can rely on
the tacit knowledge of its members, rather than writing the
knowledge down in necessarily incomplete documents and
plans [8]. Agile practice holds the key of some of the prob-
lems faced by knowledge management (KM) because many
KM practices are naturally embodied in the agile practices.
These practices hold promise for overcoming some of the
challenges faced by knowledge management. Most software
development-related knowledge is tacit and resides in the
brains of people, therefore, an agile knowledge engineer-
ing and management approach can be incorporated with an
agile software development approach, to capture and manage
knowledge and it can be used for performance improvement,
learning and decision making in an agile software develop-
ment environment.
KM can be easily accepted into agile software develop-
ment (ASD) environments. First, the agile cultural infrastruc-
ture already includes values such as communication, cooper-
ation and knowledge sharing; specifically, ASD processes
include some practices that support KM, such as stand-
up meetings, the planning game, pair programming and
the informative workplace. To solidify the claims of agilist
different KM theories/strategies are to be justified from
agile perspective, specially the knowledge creation the-
ory which is called the backbone of knowledge manage-
ment.
299
2.1 Agile knowledge management theories
Researchers have studied different KM theories and KM
models from agile perspective. Dingsøyr et al. [9] classified
studies on the basis of [10] KM schools and found that the
technocratic schools are directly related to traditional soft-
ware development, whereas the behavioral schools are more
related to the agile approach. Organizations developing soft-
ware through agile teams will benefit more from behavioral
schools and many agile practices, such as using information
radiators and co-locating teams relate to the spatial school,
and practices like scrum of scrums relate to the organiza-
tional school. They further instructed that agile teams have
good practices for KM such as retrospectives, frequent meet-
ings, and co-located teams, but agile methods provide little
support for KM beyond team level. Here, the organizational
school can be a valuable resource. Another stream of research
which fits in the organizational school in Earl’s framework
and is beneficial in management of tacit knowledge for agile
development environments is ‘communities of practice’. The
core idea in communities of practice is to get people who are
working on similar tasks to share knowledge [17,29].
2.2 Agile KM strategy
When agile practices are compared on the basis of Hanssan’s
KM strategies, it was found that most of the agile soft-
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300
ware development practices use personalization strategies
for managing the critical knowledge (Hanssan et al. [15]).
This claim is also in reference to the findings of [7,23] as
well as [24,28] stated that the elements of a KM personaliza-
tion strategy are: trust on proficient people; transformation
towards tacit knowledge; knowledge transfer through con-
versation; access to experts; focusing on effectiveness.
2.3 Agile knowledge creation theories
SECI (Socialization, Externalization, Combination, Internal-
ization) [19] model is one of the most widely cited theo-
ries in KM (Gourlay [14]), it presents the spiraling knowl-
edge processes of interaction between explicit knowledge
and tacit knowledge. The following are some factors of agile
methodology which contribute in four knowledge conversion
processes of SECI model
2.3.1 Socialization in agile (tacit-to-tacit)
Sharing tacit knowledge on frequent personal meetings: daily
stand-up, iteration plan, iteration review, release plan, ret-
rospective, strategy meeting. Collaborating cross-functional
team shares knowledge between distinct areas of software
development. Involvement of customers (product owners)
results in sharing their knowledge as well.
2.3.2 Externalization in agile (tacit-to-explicit)
Externalization is achieved by frequent meetings that result
in following explicit artifacts: vision, goals, release plan, iter-
ation story tasks, acceptance tests, and daily progress record.
Reports are also created from every meeting along with the
plans. Task estimates and the rules for their evaluation are
also made explicit.
2.3.3 Combination in agile (explicit-to-explicit)
Combination is achieved by activities like creation of plan
in collaboration with iteration backlog and progress bar, new
plan and estimations are derived and used in next iteration.
Created requirements can be combined with current cus-
tomer’s needs and accordingly modified. Guidelines and best
practices for future projects are created from the meeting
reports, plans, estimates and daily progress records.
2.3.4 Internalization in agile (explicit-to-tacit)
Internalizations is creation of guidelines and best practices
that can be made tacit and used in future projects. Managing
knowledge recommends that the knowledge creation, trans-
fer and use are supported by the use of agile in the enabling
contexts of the team interaction on a successful software
project. The contexts come from a collective platform repre-
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A. Singh et al.
sented by a concept of ba originated from the Japanese and
can be translated as place [20,21].
When compared Socialization–Externalization–Combi-
nation–Internalization (SECI) and the Articulate–
Appropriate–Learn–Act–Accumulate–Anticipate (5-A) mod-
els for knowledge management. 5-A model of knowledge
management best explains the benefits of Extreme Program-
ming. Tuomi [27] model for knowledge creation is used to
explain the different practices of XP. This gives a new per-
spective to agile processes and enables others to express agile
practices in a more generic way. 5-A model suits more to
agile practices because of its ability to explain knowledge
creation in situations where multiple communities of prac-
tice are involved.
3 Research objective
The logic behind the acceptance of agile practice is that along
with software development practices, knowledge manage-
ment practices are also woven into the practices of agile
methodologies. Agilist claimed that agile practices itself fos-
ter KM practices. Traces in the literatures have been found
where agile practices are judged and explore to find fusion
of KM into agile practices. As agile heavily rely on tacit
knowledge there is always a challenge associated with them
how explicit knowledge is maintained and support of doc-
umentation is used to managing knowledge. Research has
been undertaken to check the implication of a particular agile
practice (e.g., pair programming) for a particular KM practice
(e.g., knowledge sharing). There is hardly enough research
that has taken both the field as a whole. So, It is vital to
find out practices used by agile organizations for identify-
ing, capturing, acquiring, sharing of knowledge. The main
research objective of the study is to (a) bring out the natural
KM practices which are claimed to be embedded in agile
practices. Is any variation in adoption of KM practices at (i)
individual level (ii) organizational level? (b) Is there any dif-
ference between theory and practice for appointing a respon-
sible authority for providing guidelines for KM and agile
practices? Are the organizations hiring specialized persons
(e.g., KM officer, agile coach, scrum master) for performing
specialized tasks?
4 Research methodology
The universe of the study is software engineering organiza-
tions of India which are working with agile methodologies.
Survey is used as a measuring instrument for KM practices.
The foundation of the final instrument comes from Knowl-
edge Management Tool (KMART) [2] and Organization For
Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) [4]. Sur-
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Agile knowledge management
vey conducted for research purposes possesses three distinct
characteristics [11]. First, the survey produces quantitative
descriptions of some aspects of studied population. Second,
the main method of collecting information is by asking peo-
ple structured and predefined questions. Third, information
is generally collected about a fraction of the population under
study but it is collected in such a way so as to be able to gen-
eralize the findings to the population. Survey covers a mix of
software engineering (SE) organizations based on functional
specialization, i.e., organizations developing software alone,
organizations providing only consultancy services, and orga-
nizations that perform both the functions.
To improve the participation of the respondents classifica-
tion of organizations are bifurcated on the basis of [13] rec-
ommendations who states that the most common metric for
organization size in SE research is the number of employees.
Organizations are bifurcated as very small, small, medium,
large, and very large. The SE organizations identified as ‘very
small’ companies (having up to 50 employees) have been
clubbed with ‘small (50–500) to make a meaningful group
of small. Furthermore, SE organizations identified as ‘very
large’ companies (having more than 100,000 employees)
have been combined with ‘large’ SE organizations (having
employees between 5,001 and 100,000) because the number
of ‘very large’ companies is very less. Classification helps in
equal distribution of sample organization from the universe.
Sixty companies, 20 in each group have been identified which
are working in agile methodologies, but in real 34 organiza-
tions participated in the survey. Seven small, 11 medium and
16 large organizations are taken in survey. For reliability,
companies registered with NASSCOM1 (National Associa-
tion of Software and Service Companies) have been included
in the sample of the study.
4.1 Sampling frame and sample size
Software organization is used as unit of analysis for this
research, software managers and software engineers work-
ing in these companies were asked to answer on behalf of
their respective organizations. Three levels of respondents
have been identified for this study (cf. Table 2). To make
equal average and ratio, one response from level I, four
responses from level II and six responses from level III
workers are sought. Stratified sampling technique is used
for this research. This ratio is in response to the number
of respondents available in the organizations. The division
earns equal contribution from all sections of the organization
(cf. Table 3).
The reliability coefficients ranged from 0.71 to 0.87. Since
reliability coefficients of 0.7 or higher are considered satis-
1 http://www.nasscom.in
301
Table 2 Positions at different levels of software managers in organiza-
tion
Level-I Level-II Level-III
Chief Knowledge Project Manager, Software Engineers,
Officer, Chief Project Leader, Team Programmers,
Executive Officer, Manager, Team System Analyst,
Director, President, Leader, Senior Designer, Testers,
Vice-President, Software Engineer, SE Trainees
CEO Scrum Master, Agile
Coach, Senior
Consultants, Database
Administrator
factory [22], all scales developed for this study were judged
to be reliable
5 Results and discussion
5.1 Formal position for providing guideline of agile
practices
Agile advocates two important roles (scrum master and agile
coach) for effective and efficient handling of agile projects.
More than 73 % of Indian organizations are using scrum
methodology for software development followed by Scrum-
XP hybrid (19 %). One can easily analyze from the results
that Scrum master is the most effective person for providing
guidelines for agile teams. But in practice, almost in every
organization, neither agile coach nor scrum master provides
the guidelines rather its authority that provides the guide-
lines. It is evident to note that Indian organizations are lack-
ing in appointing a specialized person for handling the agile
projects, especially the small organization which have least
percentage of scrum masters (5.7 %) as compared to large
and medium size which have 25.5 and 28.8 %, respectively.
Comparing the full (organizations engineering all products
using agile methodologies) and partial agile organizations
(organizations engineering some of the products using agile
methodologies), 30.9 % of full agile companies have scrum
master for as compared to 12.5 % of partial agile companies.
On overall perspective 35.6 % of the industry agreed that
the there is no specific person for providing guidelines for
implementation of agile rather authority is responsible for
providing guidelines.
5.2 Formal position for KM function
As it is predicted and claimed that KM practices are embed-
ded in agile practices and agile advocates cross-functional
and self-organizing teams, it is important to know responsi-
ble authority for handling the embedded knowledge flowing
across teams, 31 % of organizations admit that KM is every-
one’s job in their organizations and 23 % of the organizations
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302
Table 3 Sampling plan and
Managerial level Target for each company
sample size for respondents (n =
34)
I 1
II 4 136
III 6 204
Total 11
do not have any position in their organization for KM func-
tioning. If we take a look on the average of software industry,
more than 50 % of respondents feel either it is everyone’s job
in their company in managing knowledge or there is no for-
mal position for KM functioning. This picture presents the
lack of support from industry for developing a procedure for
managing knowledge, on the other side its worth mentioning
that in full agile companies more than 22 % of respondents
agreed that they have a Chief learning officer at the top of
KM functioning.
5.3 Assessment of KM practices
To access the level of KM practices of Indian software engi-
neering companies working in agile software development
methodologies, a questionnaire comprising 29 questions cov-
ering different aspects of KM practice were asked to 340 soft-
ware professional (working in organization which are oper-
ating in India and using agile practices for software devel-
opment in any of its project) from 34 software engineering
organizations. The respondents were required to rate each
item of the KM practice on a five-point Likert scale ranging
from ‘Strongly Agree’ to ‘Strongly Disagree’ on numerical
scale its 5–1, respectively. The Shapiro–Wilks test is con-
ducted to check the normality of the data. The significance
level of this test on the responses from the survey was more
than the required level of 0.05, indicating that the distribution
is normal
KM practices are divided into seven groups. To deter-
mine the overall KM Practice level, the proportion of positive
responses (‘Strongly agree’ and ‘Agree’ responses combined
together) to the sum of the count of positive and negative
responses (strongly disagree + disagree responses) were cal-
culated. Neutral responses are omitted from the calculation
and treated the same as missing values.
Percentage of adoption
= [(Strongly agree + Agree)/((Strongly agree + Agree)
+(Strongly disagree + Disagree))] × 100
Overall, 60.08 % of the KM practices were given positive
response strengthening the belief of many researchers that
agile practices themselves promote KM.
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A. Singh et al.
Total target Actual response % age response
34 30 88.75
105 77.20
205 100.00
374 340 87.92
5.4 KM practice adoption level:individual perspective
A full listing of the 29 KM (detail in the following sections)
practice questions are asked from the respondents from orga-
nizations and adoption rate of each practice is calculated
according to the formula mentioned above. Based on the
adoption level of each practice, the mean adoption level of
the 29 practices is 75.09 percent. Coefficient of variance of
15.81 % and standard deviation of 11.92 % indicate that a
little variation in adoption of KM practices exist in software
engineering environment. Therefore, no evidence is found
to support our first research question that there is variation
in the adoption of individual KM practices. Eighteen of the
practices are widely adopted by more than 75 % of respon-
dents. Practice “There is a program of active participation in
discussion forums to share and learn ideas and experiences”
was adopted by almost 90 % of the organizations. It shows
the importance of human-centric approach of agile software
development, which is quoted by first the value of agile man-
ifesto that “Individuals and interactions over processes and
tools”, whereas only 50.6 % of the respondents working in
agile organizations agreed to the statement that “A high pro-
portion of our internal knowledge sharing is achieved through
documents and database”. This indicates the spirit of the man-
ifesto which states that priority should be on working soft-
ware rather than on comprehensive documentation (Table 4).
All the aspects of KM are discussed in following sections.
5.4.1 Knowledge management environment
A new dimension to KM practices is added by including KM
environment. It is significant to know whether organizing can
provide a healthy KM environment before implementing any
knowledge management process so that it can help other KM
processes to grow. Five different questions are asked from the
respondents to provide input regarding the KM environment
in their organization. Descriptive analyses of the practices
are given in Table 5.
It was found that agile organizations by default provide a
healthy environment where KM can grow. It was found that
agile organizations by default provide a healthy environment
where KM can grow. Mean adoption level of this practice
was found to be 81.45 %, which is highest among all other
categories of KM practices. It was found that organizations
maintain lesson learned and best practices repositories: in
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Table 4 KM environment
Practices Mean Std. deviation Variance Adoption level

There are many knowledge 3.3971 1.15393 1.332 72.05

fairs/exchanges within my
organization to spawn new
colleague to colleague
relationship
There are lesson learned and best 3.7500 1.03301 1.067 88.16
practices repositories within my
organization
I feel we have a knowledge sharing 3.7912 1.09998 1.210 85.76
culture within our organization
versus knowledge hoarding one
Our company actively encourages 3.7000 1.21130 1.467 79.06
the growth of networks among
employees
In our company, we design office 3.7000 1.17169 1.373 82.20
space to encourage
communication and teamwork
Mean adoption level 81.45

Table 5 Practices for KM culture and policies

Practices Mean Std. deviation Variance Adoption level

Your organization has a written knowledge management policy 3.3176 1.20434 1.450 50.89
or strategy
The organization uses learning to support existing core 3.7235 1.05318 1.109 85.21
competencies and create new ones
A climate of openness and trust permeates the organization 3.6853 1.06614 1.137 80.87
There is a clear, well-understood Knowledge Management 3.4382 1.18708 1.409 69.41
strategy in my organization that guides us with the knowledge
aspects of our business experiences
Employees at all levels are encouraged to participate in 3.2853 1.22092 1.491 63.70
formulating business policy in this organization
There are clearly defined processes and rules, which specify 3.3500 1.19654 1.432 66.5
how knowledge must be managed
Mean adoption level 69.43

more than 88 % of firms. An important aspect was found that through which knowledge should be managed. Strengthen-
85 % respondents agreed that organizations have adopted ing the concept of self-organizing and cross-functional teams
the culture of knowledge sharing rather than hording of organizations encourage their employees to participate in for-
knowledge. mulation of business policies also.

5.4.2 KM culture, policies and strategies

A group of six practices are clubbed together to judge KM

culture, policies and strategies. Group mean of adoption of
KM practices is 69.4 %. Climate of openness, trust and new
learning were found dominant in the organizations which are
accepted by more than 85 % and 80 % of organizations (cf.
Table 6).
It was found that principles of agile manifesto of openness,
trust and learning are actually followed by organization work-
ing in India (principle 6 and 7, agile manifesto). The mini-
mum accepted practice in this group is that organizations do
not favor written knowledge management policy. 66.5 % of
organizations have clearly mentioned the processes and rules
5.4.3 Knowledge capture and acquisition
Mean adoption average of this group is 70.11. 88 % of respon-
dents agreed that knowledge acquisition and dissemination is
not restricted to hierarchies. This practice has highest mean
of 3.8 and smallest std. deviation of 0.9 (cf. Table 7). Majority
of respondents (80 %) agreed that knowledge gaps are sys-
tematically identified and well-defined processes are used to
close them. A little more than half of the organizations rou-
tinely document and share information about their expertise
among groups and individuals.

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Table 6 Practices for

knowledge capture and Practices Mean Std. deviation Variance Adoption level
organizations
Knowledge gaps are systematically 3.4647 0.99048 0.981 80.32
identified and well-defined
processes are used to close them
A formal process of transferring 3.3265 1.09808 1.206 60.1
best practices, including
documentation and lessons
learned exist in the organization
Groups and individuals and 3.3235 1.19044 1.417 51.14
routinely document and share
information about their expertise
Knowledge acquisition and 3.8000 0.97521 0.951 88.88
dissemination is not restricted to
hierarchies
Mean adoption level 70.11

Table 7 Practices for

knowledge sharing Practice Mean Std. deviation Variance Adoption level

Rotation of people among projects 3.7000 1.19166 1.420 83.33

increase networks among the
colleagues
A high proportion of our internal 3.7294 1.10923 1.230 79.37
knowledge sharing is achieved
through direct people-to-people
contact
A high proportion of our internal 3.4500 1.04493 1.092 50.64
knowledge sharing is achieved
through documents and database
We regularly work within 3.5824 1.07079 1.147 79.34
cross-functional and
self-organizing teams and thus
knowledge sharing within these
teams is normal practice
There should be a program of 3.8794 0.94394 0.891 90.51
active participation in discussion
forums to share and learn ideas
and experiences
Mean adoption level 76.64

5.4.4 Knowledge sharing
Knowledge sharing is considered as a backbone of a good
team. A group of six practices are clubbed to know knowl-
edge sharing practices and culture in organsiations. Discus-
sions forms are seen to be maximum used in organsiation to
enhance knowledge sharing and learning (cf Table 8).
Over all adoption mean of this group of practices is 76.64.
To increase networks among employees more than 83 %
of respondent organizations use rotation of people among
projects. Self-organization and cross-functional teams helps
organizations in effectively sharing of knowledge. Approx-
imately, 80 % of organizations are using self-organization
and cross-functional teams and also direct people to people
contact in organizations help in sharing of internal knowl-
edge among employees of the organization. Just more than
half of the respondent organizations using documents for
internal knowledge sharing which is comparatively very less
than knowledge sharing via people to people contact which
acknowledge people to people contact mentioned in agile
manifesto.
5.4.5 Training and mentoring
Overall adoption mean of this group was recorded as 72.99.
In most of the organizations (88 %), experienced employee
transfers their knowledge to new employees which can pre-
vent ‘experience walk away home’ syndrome. 78 % of orga-
nizations offer off-site training to employees to keep their
skills up to date. Many organizations also using formal men-
toring methods like apprenticeships etc (cf. Table 9).
Interaction among experience and inexperience employ-
ees seems to be the best practice mostly followed by organi-

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Agile knowledge management 305

Table 8 Practices for training

and mentoring Practices Mean Std. deviation Variance Adoption level

Your organization provides formal 3.2500 1.30095 1.692 63.89

training related to knowledge
management practices
Your organization provides informal 3.3294 1.14070 1.301 68.67
training related to knowledge
management
Your organization uses formal 3.2471 1.11208 1.237 65.62
mentoring practices, including
apprenticeships
Your organization encourages 3.8824 1.02375 1.048 88.51
experienced employees to transfer
their knowledge to new or less
experienced employees
Your organization offers off-site 3.6412 1.17273 1.375 78.24
training to employees in order to
keep skills current
Mean adoption level 72.99

Table 9 Practices for KM

technologies Practices Mean Std. deviation Variance Adoption level

The organization has a range of 3.7765 1.14058 1.301 83.20

well-organized and integrated
techniques for transferring
knowledge, meetings, email, bulletin
boards, online forums etc
The physical environment is designed 3.7559 1.02583 1.052 84.32
to facilitate learning and knowledge
sharing
Technology brings the organization 3.9735 1.15567 1.336 67.79
closer to its customers
The organization fosters development 3.8529 0.97255 0.946 89.99
of “human-centered” information
technology
Mean adoption level 81.33

zations with mean adoption of 3.88. Formal training related
to KM practices has least accepted by the organizations.
5.4.6 KM technologies
A total five technology-related practices are included in this
section. Most of the respondent agreed that technology have
bridges the gap between organization and its customer. Mean
adoption level of this group was 81.33 %. In this group, we
talked about practices pertaining to the use of technology for
knowledge management activities. Acknowledge the human-
centric approach of agile software development. About 89 %
of organizations foster to development of human-centric
technology (cf. Table 8). 83 % of organizations are using
meetings, email, bulletin boards, online forums and data-
bases for transfer of knowledge. 67 % of the respondents
agreed that a technology brings the organization closer to
its customers. Overall adoption rate of 29 KM practices are
found to be 73.32. Summary of five most and least used KM
practice irrespective of group in which they fall is listed in
Table 10. The formula used to calculate the percentage of
adoption is same as described above. Learning and sharing
through discussion forms is the most used practices among all
respondents of organizations, whereas least accepted practice
is dependent upon documents for transfer of knowledge.
This gives strength to believe that most of the knowledge
in agile software development is tacit in nature and agile
approach heavily relies on this tacit knowledge sharing.
5.5 KM practice level: organization perspective
Adoption level of KM is also measured for each organization,
for each of the 34 companies; adoption is calculated using for-
mula mention in section. Organizational KM adoption level
is computed by averaging the scores of the respondents of
a particular organization. Percentage was calculated based
on the proportion of positive responses to the sum total of
all positive and negative responses. Depending on the calcu-
lated level of adoption, respondent organizations were placed
in one of the three categories to compare the extent of adop-

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306 A. Singh et al.

Table 10 Adoption of top five

and least five KM practices Top 5 KM practices Least 5 KM practices

There is a program of active participation in Employees at all levels are encouraged to

discussion forums to share and learn ideas and
experiences
The organization fosters development of
“human-centered” information technology
Knowledge acquisition and dissemination is not
restricted to hierarchies
Your organization encourages experienced
employees to transfer their knowledge to new
or less experienced employees
There are lesson learned and best practices
repositories within my organization
participate in formulating business policy in
this organization
A formal process of transferring best practices,
including documentation and lessons learned
exist in the organization
Groups and individuals and routinely document
and share information about their expertise
Your organization has a written knowledge
management policy or strategy
A high proportion of internal knowledge sharing
is achieved through documents and database

Table 11 Frequency of organizations by extent of adoption of KM chief learning officer, chief knowledge officer). Half of the
practices respondents responded either by saying it is everyone’s job or
Extent of KM No. of organization % age of no formal role exists in their organizations. Similarly, major-
adoption in adoption range organization ity of organizations do not hire scrum masters/agile coaches
to handle the project and team. Reliance on authority rather
75.01–100.00 18 52.94
than specialized person can affect the outcome of the project.
50.1–75.00 12 35.29
This prediction comes from the result of survey which says
25.1–50.00 4 11.77
that 35.6 % of the industry agreed that the there is no specific
Total 34 100
person for providing guidelines for using agile methodolo-
gies.
Agile organizations are seen to be inclined towards two
tion of KM practice: from 25 to 50 %; 50 to 75 %; and more aspects of KM, first, providing healthy knowledge manage-
than 75 % (cf. Table 11). ment environment and second, providing right set of technol-
The organization with the highest rate of adoption of KM ogy which can enhance the overall knowledge management
practice achieved 97.75 % of the 29 practices, and the lowest, adoption. Inclination towards technology aspect is in contrast
30.57 %. It is worth mentioning here that full agile organiza- with first value of agile manifesto “individual and interaction
tion has highest adoption rate and partial agile organization over process and tools”. Collaboration of offshore/ distrib-
has lowest adoption rate. The mean organization KM practice uted team with the help of tools can be the reason behind this
level of the responses is 74.30 % with coefficient of variance deviation.
21.83 % and standard deviation of 16.22 %. The large devi- Learning and sharing through discussion forums are the
ation concludes that there is a variation in the organizational highest used practices among all respondents of organiza-
KM practice level, which is our second research question. tions with adoption rate more than 90 %, whereas the least
This deviation is mainly because of differences in adoption accepted practice is dependence upon documents for transfer
rate of partial and full agile organizations. of knowledge which is around 50 %. This has strengthened
many practitioners’ belief that most of the knowledge in agile
software development is tacit in nature and agile approach
6 Significance and contribution heavily relies on this tacit knowledge sharing.

This study helps in understanding agile methodologies

through knowledge perspective and level of maturity of
Indian organization in adopting agile methodologies. It is
very much clear from survey that more than 73 % of Indian
organizations are using only scrum methodology; this means
majority of Indian organizations are using agile methodol-
ogy which supports only management of project rather than
technical aspect of engineering of software.
Indian software industry working with agile practices
lacks in providing any formal head for KM positioning (e.g.
7 Research limitations
First of all, the data did not represent all methods that were
considered agile. Indeed, most the data that is reported in the
survey are from organizations working in scrum methodol-
ogy. The second limitation is the possible bias toward Scrum
methodology in the data reported. The third limitation is the
possibility of survey participants’ subjective biases such as

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Agile knowledge management 307

agile proponents trying to claim agile success in introductory
projects.
8 Conclusion and future scope
This study is a survey-based empirical research on Indian
organization which are using agile practices for software
development. Proponents of agile practices generally acknowl-
edge that several KM practices are embodied in agile prac-
tices which make it popular and successful among organi-
zations, but in literature hardly any concrete study is found
which has been undertaken on agile methods to judge adop-
tion of KM practices. More studies should be conducted in
this area so that generalization of collective results can be
done. More in-depth studies are required on individual aspect
of KM. While the empirical analysis validates some long-
held beliefs, it also provides some revelation. The assump-
tion that agile-style work facilities, which figure prominently
in agile books, are prerequisite for successful agile project
execution is not supported. The findings are also in agree-
ment with almost all features of agile manifesto except with
some reservation on the usage of tool and documentation in
implementing agile practices.
9 Appendix A

QUESTIONNAIRE

General Information

1. Name: _______________________________________________________
2. Designation: __________________________________________________
3. Email id______________________________________________________
4. Organizational URL____________________________________________

5. Core Area of your Organisation:

Product Development Consultancy Both

6. Are any of your Agile teams currently distributed?

If yes how many sites use agile methodology No

9. Are you a fully agile company or implementing in agile in some products only ( Please

Tick)

Yes No

12. Please specify the dominant Agile approach that you commonly use:

XP (Extreme Programming) Crystal

Scrum FDD (Feature Driven Development)
XP-Scrum(Hybrid) Lean
DSDM (Dynamic Systems Kanban
Development Method) Mixed/Other (please specify)

13. Who defines the instructions/guidelines for the agile practices used in your company?
(Please tick)
• Authority in our company (e.g. software process group)
• Chief Information Officer, IT Director
• Agile coach
• The instructions/guidelines are taken directly from Agile books
• Scrum master
• Other (please specify)
• none (we don’t have explicit instructions/guidelines for Agile practice implementation)

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PART A

(A1) Knowledge Management Environment

(SA = Strongly Agree; A = Agree; N = Neutral; D = Disagree; SD = Strongly Disagree)

SD D N A SA

A1_1 There are many knowledge fairs/exchanges within my

organization to spawn new colleague to colleague
relationship
A1_2 There are lesson learned and best practices repositories
within my organization
A1_3 I feel we have a knowledge sharing culture within our
organization versus knowledge hoarding one
A1_4 Our company actively encourages the growth of networks
among employees
A1_5 In our company, we design office space to encourage
communication and teamwork

(A1_7)Select the Stage of Development of the KM initiative in your Organisation (Tick)

a) KM program already in place

b) Currently setting up a KM program
c) No KM program in place/ Not considering one
d) Considered a KM program earlier and decided against
e) Do not need KM program because our software development practices foster KM

(A2) KM CULTURE, POLICIES AND STRATEGIES

To what extent do you agree with the following statements? Please tick ( ) in
(SA = Strongly Agree; A = Agree;N = Neutral;D = Disagree;SD = Strongly Disagree)

SD D N A SA

A2_1 Your organisation has a written knowledge management policy

or strategy.
A2_2 The organisation uses learning to support existing core
competencies and create new ones.
A2_3 A climate of openness and trust permeates the organisation.
A2_4 There is a clear, well-understood Knowledge Management
strategy in my organisation that guides us with the knowledge
aspects of our business experiences.
A2_5 Employees at all levels are encouraged to participate in
formulating business policy in this organization
A2_6 There are clearly defined processes and rules, which specify
how knowledge must be managed

(A3) LEADERSHIP IN KM

A3 _1 Which of the following is the formal position responsible for KM in your organisation?
(Please Tick ( ))

a) Chief Knowledge Officer f) No formal role exists

b) Chief Learning Officer g) Scrum Master
c) CEO h) Any other (Pl. specify):
d) Agile coach
e) Its everyone’s job

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Agile knowledge management 309

(A4) KNOWLEDGE CAPTURE AND ACQUISITION

To what extent do you agree with the following statements? Please tick ( )
(SA = Strongly Agree; A = Agree; N = Neutral; D = Disagree; SD = Strongly Disagree)

A4_1 Knowledge gaps are systematically identified and well-defined SD D N A SA

processes are used to close them.
A4_3 A formal process of transferring best practices, including
documentation and lessons learned exist in the organisation.
A4_4 Groups and individuals and routinely document and share
information about their expertise
A4_5 Knowledge acquisition and dissemination is not restricted to
hierarchies

A4_7. Which Agile practices you use for knowledge capture and acquisition. (Check Multiple box
( ), if needed)

Continuous Integration Virtual scrum wall

Standup meetings Planning game
Pair Programming Close collaboration
Iteration planning System metaphor
Retrospectives Instant messages
Scrum of Scrums User stories
Sprint review Code reviews
Planning meeting Release planning
Short iteration Open work area
Proxy customer Collected code ownership
Sprint demo Daily task board
Refactoring Pair rotation
Burn down charts

(A5)KNOWLEDGE SHARING

To what extent do you agree with the following statements? (Please Tick ( ))
(SA = Strongly Agree; A = Agree; N = Neutral; D = Disagree; SD = Strongly Disagree)

SD D N A SA

A5_1 Rotation of people among projects increase networks among the

colleagues
A5_2 A high proportion of our internal knowledge sharing is achieved
through direct people-to-people contact
A5_3 A high proportion of our internal knowledge sharing is achieved
through documents and database
A5_4 We regularly work within cross functional and self organizing
teams and thus knowledge sharing within these teams is normal
practice
A5_5 There should be a program of active participation in discussion
forums to share and learn ideas and experiences

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310 A. Singh et al.

(A6) TRAINING AND MENTORING

To what extent do you agree with the following statements? Please tick ( ).
(SA = Strongly Agree; A = Agree; N = Neutral; D = Disagree; SD = Strongly Disagree)

SD D N A SA

A6_1 Your organisation provides formal training related to

knowledge management practices.
A6_2 Your organisation provides informal training related to
knowledge management.
A6_3 Your organisation uses formal mentoring practices, including
apprenticeships.
A6_4 Your organisation encourages experienced employees to
transfer their knowledge to new or less experienced
employees.
A6_5 Your organisation offers off-site training to employees in
order to keep skills current.

(A8)KM TECHNOLOGIES

To what extent do you agree with the following statements? Please tick ( ).
(SA = Strongly Agree; A = Agree; N = Neutral; D = Disagree; SD = Strongly Disagree)

A8_1 The organisation has a range of well-organised and integrated SD D N A SA

techniques for transferring knowledge, meetings, e-mail,
bulletin boards, on-line forums and databases.
A8_2 The physical environment is designed to facilitate learning and
knowledge sharing.
A8_3 Technology brings the organisation closer to its customers.
A8_4 The organisation fosters development of “human-centered”
information technology.

.
(48) (A10) Are there any KM practices that your organisation uses that we have not included in
this survey? If yes, please specify:

10 Appendix B

See Table 12.

Table 12 KM practices and frequency (% age) of responses for each practice

KM practice no. KM practice SD D N A SA Adoption level

A1_1 There are many knowledge fairs/exchanges within my 29 35 111 102 63 72.05
organization to spawn new colleague to colleague
relationship 8.5 10.3 32.6 30.0 18.5
A1_2 There are lesson learned and best practices repositories 21 10 78 155 76 88.16
within my organization 6.2 2.9 22.9 45.6 22.4
A1_3 I feel we have a knowledge sharing culture within our 23 17 59 150 91 85.76
organization versus knowledge hoarding one 6.8 5.0 17.4 44.1 26.8

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Agile knowledge management 311

Table 12 continued
KM practice no. KM practice SD D N A SA Adoption level

A1_4 Our company actively encourages the growth of networks among 26 32 63 116 103 79.06
employees 7.6 9.4 18.5 34.1 30.3
A1_5 In our company, we design office space to encourage 30 20 59 144 87 82.20
communication and teamwork 8.8 5.9 17.4 42.4 25.6
A2_1 Your organization has a written knowledge management policy or 55 71 84 95 35 50.89
strategy. 16.1 20.9 24.7 27.9 10.2
A2_2 The organization uses learning to support existing core 17 21 83 137 82 85.21
competencies and create new ones. 5.0 6.2 24.4 40.3 24.1
A2_3 A climate of openness and trust permeates the organization. 10 38 89 115 88 80.87
2.9 11.2 26.2 33.8 25.9
A2_4 There is a clear, well-understood Knowledge Management strategy 23 55 85 104 73 69.41
in my organization that guides us with the knowledge aspects
of our business experiences. 6.8 16.2 25.0 30.6 21.5
A2_5 Employees at all levels are encouraged to participate in 33 57 92 96 62 63.70
formulating business policy in this organization 9.7 16.8 27.1 28.2 18.2
A2_6 There are clearly defined processes and rules, which specify how 28 58 83 109 62 66.5
knowledge must be managed 8.2 17.1 24.4 32.1 18.2
A4_1 Knowledge gaps are systematically identified and well-defined 22 26 96 164 32 80.32
processes are used to close them 6.5 7.6 28.2 48.2 9.4
A4_3 A formal process of transferring best practices, including 38 65 81 132 24 60.1
documentation and lessons learned exist in the organization 11.1 19.1 23.8 38.8 7.0
A4_4 Groups and individuals and routinely document and share 46 95 52 117 30 51.14
information about their expertise 13.5 27.9 15.3 34.4 8.8
A4_5 Knowledge acquisition and dissemination is not restricted to 14 16 70 164 76 88.88
hierarchies 4.1 4.7 20.6 48.2 22.4
A5_1 Rotation of people among projects increase networks among the 34 17 32 181 74 83.33
colleagues 10.0 5.0 9.4 53.2 21.8
A5_2 A high proportion of our internal knowledge sharing is achieved 12 47 54 135 92 79.37
through direct people-to-people contact 3.5 13.8 15.9 39.7 27.1
A5_3 A high proportion of our internal knowledge sharing is achieved 24 107 74 104 31 50.64
through documents and database 7.0 31.4 21.7 30.5 9.1
A5_4 We regularly work within cross-functional and self-organizing 20 37 64 163 56 79.34
teams and thus knowledge sharing within these teams is normal
practice 5.9 10.9 18.8 47.9 16.5
A5_5 There should be a program of active participation in discussion 10 17 51 180 80 90.51
forums to share and learn ideas and experiences 3.4 5.0 15.0 52.9 23.5
A6_1 Your organization provides formal training related to knowledge 49 51 63 120 57 63.89
management practices 14.4 15.0 18.5 35.3 16.8
A6_2 Your organization provides informal training related to knowledge 29 54 75 140 42 68.67
management 8.5 15.9 22.1 41.2 12.4
A6_3 Your organization uses formal mentoring practices, including 29 48 116 104 43 65.62
apprenticeships 8.5 14.1 34.1 30.6 12.6
A6_4 Your organization encourages experienced employees to transfer 18 16 44 172 90 88.51
their knowledge to new or less experienced employees 5.3 4.7 12.9 50.6 26.5
A6_5 Your organization offers off-site training to employees in order to 25 37 55 141 82 78.24
keep skills current 7.4 10.9 16.2 41.5 24.1

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Table 12 continued
KM practice no. KM practice SD D N A SA Adoption level

A8_1 The organization has a range of well-organized and integrated 20 25 72 1173 106 83.20
techniques for transferring knowledge, meetings, email, bulletin
boards, on-line forums and databases
5.9 7.4 21.2 4.4 31.2
A8_2 The physical environment is designed to facilitate learning and 14 31 53 168 74 84.32
knowledge sharing
4.1 9.1 15.6 49.4 21.8
A8_3 Technology brings the organization closer to its customers 31 45 135 129 31 67.79
9.1 13.2 39.7 37.9 9.1
A8_4 The organization fosters development of “human-centered” 10 16 87 131 95 89.99
information technology
2.9 4.7 25.6 38.5 27.9

11 Appendix C

See Table 13.

Table 13 Test of normalcy of data

Organizational KM practice level Kolmogorov–Smirnova Shapiro–Wilk

Statistic df Sig. Statistic df Sig.

0.114 34 0.200∗ 0.950 34 0.120
a Lilliefors
significance correction. *This is a lower bound of the true
significance

Descriptive analyses See Table15.

See Table 14.

Table 15 Organization KM practice level—characteristics of distribu-

Table 14 KM practice adoption level—characteristics of distribution tion
Descriptive Statistic Std. error
Descriptive analysis Statistic Std. error
Mean 75.09 2.25956
Mean 74.30 2.78267
95 % confidence Lower bound 70.46
95 % confidence Lower bound 68.64
interval for mean
interval for mean
Upper bound 79.72
Upper bound 79.96
5 % trimmed mean 75.59
5 % trimmed mean 75.24
Median 79.34
Median 77.77
Coeff. of variance 15.81
Coeff. of variance 21.83
Variance 143.20
Variance 263.27
Std. deviation 11.92
Std. deviation 16.22
Minimum 50.64
Minimum 30.58
Maximum 90.51
Maximum 97.76
Range 39.87
Range 67.18
Interquartile range 18.70
Interquartile range 21.74
Skewness −0.678 0.434
Skewness −0.760 0.403
Kurtosis −0.563 0.845
Kurtosis 0.396 0.788

123
 Lean
Other
Scrum

Crystal
Kanban
Core area
Size of the
company
Dimension

See Table 19.

See Table 18.
See Table 17.
See Table 16.

XP-scrum (hybrid)
Both

Name of the methodologies

XP (extreme programming)
Categories

Type of company Fully agile

Agile knowledge management

Consultancy
Large (size I)

Partially agile
Small (size III)

FDD (feature driven development)

Medium (size II)

8
7

19
15
12
Product development 14
16
11

DSDM (dynamic systems development method)

Table 17 Agile methodologies used by organizations

1.5
2.4
7.1
7.9
12.6
12.6
16.5
19.4
73.5
Table 16 Demographic profiles of sample organizations

Percentage
55.88
23.52
42.11
47.05
32.35

44.11
35.29
20.58

9
8
7
6
5
4
3
2
1
No. of companies Percentage

Table 18 Formal position for guidelines of agile practices Rank

Group/sub-group Authority Chief Information Officer, IT Director Agile coach Guidelines are taken directly from Agile Scrum master Any other None Statistics
books

Size of company
I 36.9 0 9.4 3.1 28.8 18.1 3.8 χ 2 = 40.3
Author's personal copy

II 29.1 6.4 16.4 0 24.5 11.8 11.8 C =0.326

III 42.9 8.6 11.4 2.9 5.7 20.0 8.6
Core area
Product development 31.7 5.4 12.0 3.0 31.7 6.0 10.2 χ 2 = 56.80
Consultancy 35.7 0 4.8 0 16.7 42.9 0 C = 0.379
Both 40.5 3.1 14.5 1.5 13.0 21.4 6.1
Type of company
Fully agile 43.6 1.1 8.5 0 30.9 9.6 6.4 χ 2 = 54.22
Partially agile 25.7 7.2 16.4 4.6 12.5 25.0 8.6 C = 0.371
Team distribution
Distributed 39.4 1.8 12.8 3.1 19.9 11.9 11.1 χ 2 = 37.23
Co-located 28.1 7.9 10.5 0 28.1 25.4 0 C = 0.314
Software industry 35.6 3.8 12.1 2.1 22.6 16.5 7.4

* Significant at 5 % ( p = 0.05) ** Significant at 1 % ( p = 0.01)

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Table 19 Formal position of KM functioning

Group/sub- Chief Chief CEO Agile coach Its No formal Scrum Master Any other Statistics
group knowledge learning every-one’s role exists
officer officer job

Size of comp.
I 0 21.9 3.8 0 42.5 11.2 10 10 χ 2 = 135.5
II 5.5 10.9 6.4 0 17.3 35.5 11.8 12.7 C = 0.533
III 7.1 0 38.6 5.7 28.6 17.1 0 2.9
Core area
Product 0 13.4 6.6 1.2 41.3 18.6 10.8 7.8 χ 2 = 63.75
develop-
ment
Consul- 11.9 14.3 21.4 0 9.5 42.9 0 0 C= 0.397
tancy
Both 4.6 13.7 15.3 1.5 26 15.3 8.4 15.3
Type of comp.
Fully agile 3.2 22.3 7.4 2.1 21.8 16 9.6 17.6 χ 2 = 75.59
Partially 3.3 3.3 17.1 0 43.4 25.7 7.2 0 C = 0.426
agile
Team distribution
Distributed 4.9 15.5 8.0 0.9 26.1 23.0 12.8 8.8 χ 2 = 39.40
Co-located 0 10.5 19.3 1.8 42.1 14.9 0 11.4 C = 0.322
Software 3.2 13.8 11.8 1.2 31.5 20.3 8.5 9.7
industry
* Significant at 5 % ( p = 0.05) ** Significant at 1 % ( p = 0.01)

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