Perceptions and Knowledge Sharing Barriers in Agile Development

 While the literature offers several frameworks that explain barriers to knowledge sharing within software development teams, little is known about differences in how team members perceive these barriers. These differences are important since they can result in divergent actions to overcome the barriers, which, in turn, might result in conflicts among stakeholders that could produce project delays. Based on an in-depth multi- case study of four software projects, the study investigates how project managers, developers, testers and user representatives think about barriers to effective knowledge sharing in agile development. Adapting comparative causal mapping, cognitive maps for each of the four roles are constructed, and overlap and divergence in map constructs and causal linkages are identified. These results are used to develop a theoretical framework of knowledge-sharing barriers.