Knowledge Management in Agile Software Development- A Literature Review

Agile Software Development (ASD) is a knowledge intensive and collaborative activity. The key of acquiring, creating and co-operating the knowledge depends on Knowledge Management (KM). The field of knowledge management helps to improve the productivity of the whole agile software development process from the beginning to the end of the phase. Therefore, investigation of various aspects such as purposes, types of knowledge, technologies and research type is essential. The goal of this study is to conduct a literature review on existing researches on KM initiatives in ASD in order to identify the-state-of-the-art in the area as well as future research opportunities. A mapping study was performed by searching six electronic databases, and we considered studies published until December 2017. The initial resulting set comprised of 404 studies. From this set, a total of 10 studies were selected. for these 10, we performed snowballing and direct search of publications of researchers and research groups that accomplished these studies. Finally, we identified 12 reviewed studies addressing KM in Agile software development in order to extract relevant information on a set of research questions. Although few studies were found that addressed KM in ASD, the mapping shows an increasing attention and interest in the topic in the recent years. Reuse of knowledge of the team is a perspective that has received more attention. Moreover, as a main conclusion, the results show that KM is pointed out as an important strategy for increasing the effectiveness in ASD.