THE IMPACT OF THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC ON THE KNOWLEDGE SHARING PROCESS OF CO-LOCATED SCRUM TEAMS

Abstract

As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, measures such as social distancing and lockdowns were introduced to prevent further spreading of the coronavirus. For employees of software development companies, it meant that they were forced to work from home instead of continuing from the co-located office space. This change affected software development companies that followed the agile software development (ASD) approach. One of the characteristics of ASD is that it emphasizes regular (informal) face-to-face conversations. Scrum teams that were used to working in a co-located environment, had to switch to a
work-from-home environment in a very short time. Due to this change, the way collaboration and knowledge sharing occurred changed. The precise impact of the transition to fully remote work on knowledge sharing for co-located Scrum teams is not entirely visible due to the novelty of the event. Conducting research helps to understand what type of adaptations were made to continue knowledge sharing and lessons learned for similar events in the future. This research aimed thus to understand the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic
on the knowledge-sharing process of co-located Scrumteams.
The research was conducted by following an exploratory case study approach. 21 Scrum practitioners of two mobile app development companies were interviewed during semistructured interviews. During the interviews, the Scrum practitioners’ experiences with knowledge sharing were captured through audio recordings. The collected audio recordings were in a later stage transcribed and analyzed through thematic analysis to categorize the findings.
One of the main findings is that Scrum practitioners were able to adapt quickly to the new situation by digitalizing knowledge sharing practices. Physical meetingswere replaced with online meetings and physical whiteboardswere replaced by virtual collaboration tools. In one of the companies, an oversharing culture emerged during the pandemic. The oversharing culture consists of the usage of more precise language and giving other teammembers
regular status updates to increase visibility. More emphasis was put on writing documentation to ensure tacit knowledge was not lost during the pandemic. These emerging patterns contradict the Agile Manifesto where working software got prioritized over comprehensive documentation.
The pandemic also introduced enablers and disablers that influenced knowledge sharing among Scrum practitioners. Enablers of knowledge sharing include online collaboration tools to continue day-to-day activities, better time management by working from home and online events hosted by the company to build personal connections. Disablers of knowledge sharing include not knowing the availability of a person, the waiting time to get a response back and challenges in aligning with someone who is not physically nearby.
To capture how knowledge transformation occurred during the pandemic, an updated knowledge transformation model was built. This model illustrates how knowledge can transform from one form (i.e. tacit, explicit, embedded knowledge) to another during dayto-day activities. The developed knowledge transformation model contributes to and expands knowledge sharingmodels in the literature

Date of Award	27 Feb 2024
Original language	English
Supervisor	Ebrahim Rahimi (Examiner) & G Alpár (Co-assessor)