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http://dx.doi.org/10.3837/tiis.2019.09.013

Challenges in Distributed Agile Software Development Environment: A Systematic Literature Review  

Ghani, Imran (Indiana University of Pennsylvania)
Lim, Angelica (Monash University Malaysia)
Hasnain, Muhammad (Monash University Malaysia)
Ghani, Israr (Faculty of Computing, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia)
Babar, Muhammad Imran (Army Public College of Management & Sciences)
Publication Information
KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Systems (TIIS) / v.13, no.9, 2019 , pp. 4555-4571 More about this Journal
Abstract
Due to increasing interest in distributed agile software development, there is a need to systematically review the literature on challenges encountered in the agile software development environment. Using the Systematic Literature Review (SLR) approach, 32 relevant publications, dated between 2013 and 2018 were selected from four electronic databases. Data from these publications were extracted to identify the key challenges across the system development life cycle (SDLC) phases, which essentially are short phases in each agile-based iteration. 5 types of key challenges were identified as impacting the SDLC phases; these challenges are Communication, Coordination, Cooperation, Collaboration and Control. In the context of the SLDC phases, the Communication challenge was discussed the most often (79 times, 33%). The least discussed challenges were Cooperation and Collaboration (26 times, 11% each). The 5 challenges occur because of distances which occur in distributed environment. This SLR identified 4 types of distances which contribute to the occurrence of these key challenges - physical, temporal, social-cultural and knowledge/experience. Of the 32 publications, only 4 included research which proposed new solutions to address challenges in agile distributed software development. The authors of this article believe that the findings in this SLR are a resource for future research work to deepen the understanding of and to develop additional solutions to address the challenges in distributed agile software development.
Keywords
Distributed agile development; challenges; systematic literature review; SLR; Scrum; eXtreme Programming (XP); DSDM; FDD; Kanban; Scrumbun; SDLC;
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