Investigating the Establishment of Communities of Practice in Large-Scale Agile Software Development

Motivation

Frequent and fast changes in technology, markets, and customer needs force organizations to respond quickly to remain competitive. In our digital world, these emerging requirements have particularly affected software development. The resulting need for agility paved the way for the success of agile software development. Inspired by their success on a small scale, large organizations have started to apply agile methods in a larger context, known as large-scale agile software development (LSAD).

In this context, the increased complexity makes knowledge sharing, creation, and cross-team collaboration even more relevant. However, agile development practices on a small-scale focus on tacit knowledge and collaboration at an individual team level, which is insufficient in an organization consisting of multiple cooperating agile teams. The concept of communities of practices (CoPs), groups of experts that share a common interest, meet to exchange experiences, and learn from each other about a topic, can help to solve issues that span multiple teams and effectively share and create knowledge on a higher organizational level. Still, research and guidance for practitioners in that field are scarce.

Goal

To fill this gap, we investigate knowledge sharing, knowledge creation and cross-team coordination with a focus on the establishment and management of CoPs in the context of large-scale agile software development. We also want to build the foundation of providing relevant guidance for practitioners by identifying particular areas and problems of high relevance to the practice that require more research/guidance. Therefore, our first step is an expert interview study to investigate the establishment of CoPs in this area and to identify topics relevant to practitioners that require more research/guidance. 

Research Questions

RQ1: What types of CoPs exist in large-scale agile software development?

RQ2: What are the goals and reasons for the establishment of CoPs in that context?

RQ3: How were the CoPs established? Who was involved and how?

RQ4: How do knowledge sharing, and governance take place?

RQ5: What research topics in that context would be relevant/interesting for practice?

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