Volume 13, Number 1

Hybrid Practices in Global Software Development: A Systematic Literature Review

  Authors

Rafael Camara, Iury Monte, Annelyelthon Alves and Marcelo Marinho, Federal Rural University of Pernambuco, Brazil

  Abstract

Although agile methods in their purest way fit several companies, it has been a challenge to perform them in environments with distributed teams developing large software applications. Contractual items, for projects under development for external organizations, introduce additional complexities for pure agilebased approaches. The majority of global teams and companies use hybrid development practices that combine different development methods and frameworks. This research provides results from an empirical field study on how the hybrids practices are adopted in Global Software Development (GSD) projects. A systematic literature review was conducted to capture the status of combining agile with plan-driven in GSD projects. The results were limited to peer-reviewed conference papers or journal articles, published between 2001 and 2020. The present study selected 37 papers from five different bibliographic databases. In the end, 16 practices were summarized and described as hybrid by GSD projects. Based on the findings of this study, the authors can conclude that the contribution of this study is not only limited to identifying how hybrid development practices are applied in GSD but also allowing that practitioners can have a basis for adapting their development methods.

  Keywords

Agile software development, Hybrid development method, Systematic literature review, Global software development.