Knowledge-intensive companies that adopt Agile Software Development (ASD) relay on efficient implementation of Knowledge Management (KM) strategies to promotes 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 stimulate 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 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. © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2018.

Background: Organizations adopting Agile Software Development (ASD) use different Knowledge Management (KM) practices to retain and share knowledge. However, it is often the case that knowledge retention is carried out in an ad-hoc way.

Aims: In this study, we report our experience from proposing the Knowledge Critically Evaluation Method (KCEM) to evaluate knowledge items (KIT). Our main goal with KCEMs is to support companies to systematically retain knowledge in ASD contexts.

Method: We conducted an improvement case study to develop and evaluate KCEM. This research follows the guidelines for technology transfer between industry and academia. The case and unit of analysis is Ericsson, a Swedish company that develops telecommunication solutions.

Results: In this paper, we provide initial results of both lab and static validation, enriched by the lessons learned.

Conclusions: The preliminary results show that KCEM is easy to understand and use, provides a different perspective on the KIT by visualizing in the criticality chart, and reduces the level of abstraction associated to a knowledge subject area.

As the software value chain is knowledge-based due to the high dependency on people, the lack of practice to manage knowledge as a resource might jeopardize its application in software development. The resource-based view of the firm provides a different perspective on the utilization of knowledge, assisting the identification of the Knowledge-Based Resources (KBRs) that allow a company to have a continuous readiness to quickly respond to the market changes. To understand how the KBRs support coordination in Agile Software Development (ASD), we applied a grounded theory approach, collecting data from 18 practitioners, coming from five companies. As results, we identified 44 KBRs that were grouped in the Continuous Assimilation Model (CHASM). They support coordination in ASD with continuous assimilation of change which is supported by people’s business analytic perspective and product systemic reasoning. The companies are able to utilize a certain level of their KBRs through social collaboration and team environment/settings. However, the inefficient utilization of these resources results in a significant knowledge loss. Furthermore, CHASM points out areas where practitioners can establish strategies based on the priorities that the companies give to the investigated KBRs, as well as a set of research opportunities for future investigation.