Systematic Literature Review Report on the Challenges of Agile Scrum Application to Large-Scale Software Projects

Abstract

Agile in general and Scrum in particular have widely been employed in the software development arena ranging from small to medium to large and multinational projects. There are empirical studies, experience reports, and case studies that have reported the successes, issues, and challenges of using the methodology in large-scale software development projects context. This Systematic Literature review employs the PRISMA methodology for searching case studies, experience reports and empirical research related to successes, issues, and challenges faced by software companies that fully harnessed Scrum method for large-scale software development projects. A search protocol and context were prepared to guide the search task. Several papers published over more than a decade from multiple scientific databases, including IEEE Xplore and SCOPUS were analyzed. 183 publications in the search topic were retrieved. After duplicates and inclusion criteria were applied, only twenty-six full journal articles were considered for the review. Eight articles were removed as they were not directly related to the context of the research. Finally, eighteen journal articles were analyzed to uncover the issues and challenges in the application of Scrum for large-scale software development projects. An iterative coding of themes had been employed to identify and categorize the key themes in the papers. Accordingly, eight main themes and forty-six subthemes had been identified. Among them are Dependency Issues, Agile Difficult to Implement, Multi-team Environment Challenges, Challenges of Requirement Engineering, and Knowledge Issues take the front rows in order.