An Analysis of Knowledge Management Challenges in Agile Global Software Development

Abstract

Agile global software development is an emerging trend in the software industry despite of the fundamental contradiction between the nature of agile methods and global software development. Agile methods heavily rely on informal communication and coordination mechanisms thus making use of tacit knowledge while in global software development, knowledge is mostly of the explicit nature owing to the formal communication methods. This major difference puts forth some serious challenges to knowledge management in an agile global software environment. This study identifies those challenges through the literature review to lay down the foundation for future research. Seven challenges have been identified as the result of the literature review of the studies between 2014 to 2016 in three databases. The identified challenges have been prioritized based on their frequency of occurrence. Knowledge management is an important aspect of software development and organizations round the globe are focusing on the efficient and effective ways to manage knowledge. It is recommended to address these challenges to pave way for the knowledge management when using agile methods in global software development to achieve better quality software products.