9. Performative and Lexical Knowledge Sharing in Agile Requirements

We present the results of our field study that describe how requirements knowledge was shared at an industrial software company using agile software practices. As is common in agile processes, the team did not capture requirements knowledge in a comprehensive specification document. Instead, requirements knowledge was captured in user stories, automated acceptance tests, personal notes, and conversations. We identified two modes of knowledge sharing: performative and lexical. Performative knowledge, which occurs through actions such as question-asking, gestures, and informal speeches, was observed in conversations and at the Scrum board. Lexical knowledge sharing, which occurs through inscribed texts, was observed in testing wiki and the software release documents. We found that the software team relied mainly on performative knowledge sharing. Although team members shared few written documents, they were able to effectively develop software that satisfied customer requirements. Results from our field study have implications for both agile practitioners and knowledge management. The former could encourage question-asking to provide opportunities for performative knowledge sharing. The latter could pay attention to personal management so that users can more effectively engage in performative knowledge sharing.