An empirical study to design an effective agile knowledge management framework.

Despite the profusion of research about knowledge management within larger organizations, fewer studies tried to analyze knowledge management in small and medium enterprises. The study contributes to research by providing a more nuanced classification of knowledge management approaches and guides managers about the types of knowledge management approaches that should be adopted based on the size, geographical dispersion, and task nature of the organization. A purposive sample of 34 companies was selected for this study along with a survey that focused on the objective of investigating awareness and implementing strategies of knowledge management. The various phases and processes of knowledge management were accounted for. Organizations were bifurcated on the criteria like the core area of the company, the size of the company, the type of company, etc. Knowledge management implementation was judged through each dimension. Different statistical tests were carried out to test a set hypothesis. Having established that wide variation in overall adoption of knowledge management practices exists across the software engineering organizations, the different characteristics associated with knowledge management adoption were tested: organization size in terms of employee strength, the domain of the software engineering, team distribution, and type of organization. To a surprise, most of the organizational characteristics are not found in the significantly associated with knowledge management adoption except knowledge management adoption level in full and partial agile organizations and the relationship between the organization KM level and the number of software developers in organization for only product development companies is found significant. Opposite to the claims of many researchers, this study does not find any significant difference between knowledge management adoptions between distributed and co-located agile teams. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]