Spatial Knowledge Creation and Sharing Activities in a Distributed Agile Project

Abstract

Knowledge management (KM) is key to the success of any software organization. KM in software development has been the center of attention for researchers due to its potential to improve productivity. However, the knowledge is not only stored in repositories but is also shared in the office space. Agile software development teams use the benefits of shared space to foster knowledge creation. But it is difficult to create and share this type of knowledge, when team members are distributed. This participatory single-case study indicates that, distributed team members rely heavily on knowledge codification and application of tools for knowledge sharing. We have found that, the studied project did not use any specific software or hardware that would enable spatial knowledge creation and sharing. Therefore parts of the knowledge items not codified were destined to be unavailable for remote team members.