Agile Software Development and the Barriers to Transfer of Knowledge: An Interpretive Case Study

Agile practices to systems development are believed to depend largely on the developers’ competences, experience and knowledge and to a lesser degree on formal development processes and methods. In this paper we investigate the knowledge transfer and barriers to the transfer of agile development practices in an interpretive case study. The case company is a pharmaceutical firm where we studied how they develop software and how they transfer their own experience. Based on the literature we develop an initial framework of barriers to knowledge transfer and apply it to interpret the case study. From this case study we are able to discuss the initial framework and extend it to a framework of knowledge transfer of agile practices. The framework provides a better understanding of the barriers to knowledge transfer of agile practices. The paper contributes with (1) an application of the framework to explain knowledge transfer and barriers, and (2) specifically explicate potential barriers hindering knowledge transfer of agile practices. This has implications for the implementation of agile development practices.