A systematic literature review on characteristics of the front-end phase of agile software development projects and their connections to project success
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Abstract
Context
Software development of new products and services often involves a front-end phase where user needs are analysed, costs and benefits are estimated, and initial plans are created.
Goal
This study aims to learn more about how the introduction of agile software development has affected practices and outcomes related to cost and benefit estimation in this front-end phase and to understand better what would improve this phase.
Method
We identified, reviewed and aggregated the results from 42 relevant research articles by searching literature databases and snowballing relevant articles.
Results
The front-end phase of agile was found to be, on average, similar and just as comprehensive as that of non-agile software development. This may be unfortunate, given the finding that more successful agile software development is connected with less detail in cost estimation and planning-related activities. A less comprehensive front-end phase may be especially beneficial for low-risk agile software development.
Conclusion
The results of this review suggest that agile principles, so far, have had a limited influence on the front-end phase. We recommend more flexibility and context-dependency in how the front-end phase of agile software development is conducted, including less comprehensive estimation and planning activities for low-risk software development contexts.
期刊介绍:
The Journal of Systems and Software publishes papers covering all aspects of software engineering and related hardware-software-systems issues. All articles should include a validation of the idea presented, e.g. through case studies, experiments, or systematic comparisons with other approaches already in practice. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:
• Methods and tools for, and empirical studies on, software requirements, design, architecture, verification and validation, maintenance and evolution
• Agile, model-driven, service-oriented, open source and global software development
• Approaches for mobile, multiprocessing, real-time, distributed, cloud-based, dependable and virtualized systems
• Human factors and management concerns of software development
• Data management and big data issues of software systems
• Metrics and evaluation, data mining of software development resources
• Business and economic aspects of software development processes
The journal welcomes state-of-the-art surveys and reports of practical experience for all of these topics.