Knowledge Management: the agile way

The logic behind the acceptance of agile practice is that along with software development, project and knowledge management (KM) practices are woven into the practices of agile methodologies, which have made these methodologies very popular among software development communities. There are many practices in agile (e.g. Pair programming, scrum meetings, onsite customer etc.) which encourage creation, retention and dissemination of knowledge. Therefore, there is an urgent need to analyze agile software development practices from KM perspective. Many covert and overt factors are identified in applying agile practices in software development organisations. Different knowledge creation and management theories are analyzed from agile perspectives and relationship is established among knowledge management and agile practices with a special focus on Indian software engineering organisations. Keywords: Agile software development, Knowledge management, Scrum, Extreme programmin

Collaborative Environments. Considerations Concerning Some Collaborative Systems

It is obvious, that all collaborative environments (workgroups, communities of practice, collaborative enterprises) are based on knowledge and between collaboration and knowledge management there is a strong interdependence. The evolution of information systems in these collaborative environments led to the sudden necessity to adopt, for maintaining the virtual activities and processes, the latest technologies/systems, which are capable to support integrated collaboration in business services. In these environments, portal-based IT platforms will integrate multi-agent collaborative systems, collaborative tools, different enterprise applications and other useful information systems.collaboration, collaborative environments, knowledge management, collaborative systems, portals, knowledge portals, agile development of portals

Knowledge Mobilization in Agile Information Systems Projects: A Literature Analysis

This study focuses on how knowledge is mobilized in agile information systems (IS) projects. One crucial success factor of those projects is to mobilize knowledge through different knowledge management processes. It is vital to establish efficient knowledge management (KM) processes to generate a knowledge culture based on transparency and communication. Communication channels, digital tools, and platforms are essential for establishing a KM infrastructure supporting the knowledge work of the project organization. Thus, each IS implementation team should maintain a knowledge base and a knowledge potential at some level. However, this is not always the case. We conducted a literature review to survey the extant research on the role of KM in agile system development projects. The agile approach is often associated with the networking model and tacit knowledge. The findings indicate that the agile approach is supposed to promote KM. While tacit knowledge is rooted in the analogue process of continuous actions and informal communication, explicit knowledge is captured in digital records of documentation and databases. In KM, the personalization model (behavioural, networking) and the codification (technocratic, repository) model is central. The choice of system development method (agile versus plan-driven) influences how knowledge is mobilized in the project organization. An agile approach heavily relies on informal communication, tacit knowledge sharing, and light documentation. In contrast, the plan-driven methods such as the waterfall approach generate more explicit knowledge through documentation. Communities of practice are important structures for transforming from plan-driven to agile approaches. We present a framework showing specific challenges the literature identifies concerning the efficient mobilization of knowledge in the agile context. For large-scale agile projects, informal coordination mechanisms were important. This study identifies several measures for overcoming barriers and risks for knowledge sharing in the agile context.Knowledge Mobilization in Agile Information Systems Projects: A Literature AnalysispublishedVersio

Change-Impact driven Agile Architecting.

Software architecture is a key factor to scale up Agile Software Development ASD in large softwareintensive systems. Currently, software architectures are more often approached through mechanisms that enable to incrementally design and evolve software architectures aka. agile architecting. Agile architecting should be a light-weight decision-making process, which could be achieved by providing knowledge to assist agile architects in reasoning about changes. This paper presents the novel solution of using change-impact knowledge as the main driver for agile architecting. The solution consists of a Change Impact Analysis technique and a set of models to assist agile architects in the change -decision-making- process by retrieving the change-impact architectural knowledge resulting from adding or changing features iteration after iteration. To validate our approach, we have put our solution into practice by running a project of a metering management system in electric power networks in an i-smart software factory

Hybrid Project Management: Agile with Discipline

Effective management of software projects will always be important regardless of the software development method (agile, iterative or waterfall) used. A recent movement in the software development industry towards adopting Agile practices have left many questioning the role of traditional project management. However, in practice companies often struggle with changing established practices. Many companies have adopted hybrid methods to adjust to changing requirements. For many of these companies these hybrid approaches are seen as the best of both worlds as they can leverage the advantages of Agile with the strengths of traditional practices. While researchers have begun proposing ways that these approaches can integrate there remains limited actual academic evidence that describes how these models are being integrated in practice. This research contributes to the knowledge by discussing findings based on a unique approach adopted by the IBM Center of Excellence called Agile with Discipline

An ontological model of experience-based knowledge management in agile software development environment

Agile software development (ASD) involves more in discussion and communication between team members compared to documentation; it is difficult for team members to share knowledge among them. In this matter, knowledge management (KM) plays critical role in managing and capturing the knowledge especially experience-based knowledge. This research main purpose is to create ontology to represent the knowledge that has been stored in knowledge repository after capturing the experience knowledge from the development team in ASD. This ontology model will help by describing a relationship that will later on help in sharing the experience knowledge easily among Community of Practice (CoP). A literature review of the common things in the ASD been conducted, we then creating ontology model by using a tools called Protégé. This ontology called as Experience-Based Knowledge Management (EBKM) Ontology Model. The model is deployed to apply to the reality as a prototype to demonstrate its real value

Keeping it Agile: The Internationalisation Decision for The Agile Executive

This case focuses on The Agile Executive, a company looking for new market opportunities to expand their business in several possible European markets. This case is also an exercise case for students to practice their knowledge from the perspective of strategic management, branding, marketing & sales, conducting market research and the development of feasible marketing entry strategies, all based on clear use of robust criteria, aligning with the core competences, resources and capabilities of the organisation. This case can be divided into sub-cases that could focus on answering the questions of how to enter or expand in a target European market, which market to enter, how to position and brand the organisation, all based on a clear strategic analysis of the core competences of The Agile Executive

Empirical Investigation on Agile Methods Usage: Issues Identified from Early Adopters in Malaysia

Agile Methods are a set of software practices that can help to produce products faster and at the same time deliver what customers want. Despite the benefits that Agile methods can deliver, however, we found few studies from the Southeast Asia region, particularly Malaysia. As a result, less empirical evidence can be obtained in the country making its implementation harder. To use a new method, experience from other practitioners is critical, which describes what is important, what is possible and what is not possible concerning Agile. We conducted a qualitative study to understand the issues faced by early adopters in Malaysia where Agile methods are still relatively new. The initial study involves 13 participants including project managers, CEOs, founders and software developers from seven organisations. Our study has shown that social and human aspects are important when using Agile methods. While technical aspects have always been considered to exist in software development, we found these factors to be less important when using Agile methods. The results obtained can serve as guidelines to practitioners in the country and the neighbouring regions

Non-Technical Individual Skills are Weakly Connected to the Maturity of Agile Practices

Context: Existing knowledge in agile software development suggests that individual competency (e.g. skills) is a critical success factor for agile projects. While assuming that technical skills are important for every kind of software development project, many researchers suggest that non-technical individual skills are especially important in agile software development. Objective: In this paper, we investigate whether non-technical individual skills can predict the use of agile practices. Method: Through creating a set of multiple linear regression models using a total of 113 participants from agile teams in six software development organizations from The Netherlands and Brazil, we analyzed the predictive power of non-technical individual skills in relation to agile practices. Results: The results show that there is surprisingly low power in using non-technical individual skills to predict (i.e. explain variance in) the mature use of agile practices in software development. Conclusions: Therefore, we conclude that looking at non-technical individual skills is not the optimal level of analysis when trying to understand, and explain, the mature use of agile practices in the software development context. We argue that it is more important to focus on the non-technical skills as a team-level capacity instead of assuring that all individuals possess such skills when understanding the use of the agile practices.Comment: 18 pages, 1 figur