Abstract

One of the central tasks of process improvement is to deal with changing environmental conditions, and organizational training is crucial for this purpose. The software industry is one such dynamic and ever-changing environment. However, knowledge dissemination and ongoing learning is an open challenge in this industry, especially in agile organizations where continuous learning is essential. This paper has two aims: 1) investigate and report the state of organizational training practice in the agile software development setting; 2) identify relevant issues to be considered by agile organizations addressing the organizational training process. To do this, we conducted a systematic mapping of the literature to provide an overview of how agile organizations plan, perform, and assess their training activities as part of their continuous learning process. Compared with other agile software development domains, the literature on this topic is scant, but we were able to derive relevant results related, for example, to the most popular training techniques or training coordination mechanisms. We also identified some evidence gaps concerning how organizations plan training, how they use training records, and how they assess and improve training processes. The paper concludes by presenting eight important issues that cover the different organizational training activities and that provide valuable insights to effectively share knowledge in agile settings.