A view towards Organizational Learning: An empirical study on Scrum implementation

Scrum is one of the agile methods gaining more relevance among academics and practitioners. It is mainly applied in the context of software development, which is a knowledge-intensive activity and depends on learning to evolve. Therefore, it becomes crucial to understand the question: Does Scrum implementation trigger a process of Organizational Learning? If ‘Yes’, how does the OL occur? This relation has never been established in previous studies. The answer to these questions was based on a qualitative research, involving key members from UOL the most important Brazilian company regarding content and services on the Internet, key members from an academic project and an expert in agile methods implementation. Among the main findings, we highlight that the process of Organizational Learning could be verified through the individual members’ learning and through the changes within the organization in management, people, process and technology. Beyond the relation established between Organizational Learning and Scrum implementation, this study contributes to academic and practical fields by the identification of changes occurred in type of knowledge valued, physical structure, promotion criteria, and individual dependence decrease when implementing Scrum. It is perceived that knowledge management, as a way of perpetuating the learning in the organization is still a challenge for agile software organizations. KeywordsOrganizational Learning; Agile Software Development; Scrum implementation.