A systematic literature review on characteristics of the front-end phase of agile software development projects and their connections to project success

IF 3.7 2区计算机科学 Q1 COMPUTER SCIENCE, SOFTWARE ENGINEERING

Journal of Systems and Software Pub Date : 2024-07-08 DOI:10.1016/j.jss.2024.112155

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引用次数: 0

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.

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关于敏捷软件开发项目前端阶段特点及其与项目成功关系的系统性文献综述

背景新产品和服务的软件开发通常涉及一个前端阶段，在这一阶段需要分析用户需求、估算成本和收益并制定初步计划。本研究旨在进一步了解敏捷软件开发的引入如何影响这一前端阶段与成本和收益估算相关的实践和结果，并更好地了解如何改进这一阶段。方法我们通过搜索文献数据库和 "滚雪球 "式搜索相关文章，确定、审查并汇总了 42 篇相关研究文章的结果。结果我们发现，平均而言，敏捷软件开发的前端阶段与非敏捷软件开发的前端阶段相似，且同样全面。考虑到敏捷软件开发的成功与成本估算和规划相关活动的细节较少有关，这可能是令人遗憾的。本综述的结果表明，迄今为止，敏捷原则对前端阶段的影响有限。我们建议在如何进行敏捷软件开发的前端阶段时要更加灵活，并根据具体情况而定，包括在低风险的软件开发环境中开展不太全面的估算和规划活动。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

Journal of Systems and Software 工程技术-计算机：理论方法

CiteScore

8.60

自引率

5.70%

发文量

193

审稿时长

16 weeks

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.