Communities of Practice in Large-Scale Agile Development: A Systematic Literature Mapping

Agile software development has become an attractive option for companies trying to improve their performance, even though its methods were originally designed for small, individual teams. Current literature does not provide a cohesive picture of how agile methods scale into account, like large and often distributed software development projects. Some studies claim that Communities of Practice (CoPs) can be essential to successfully adopting agile practices, especially in large organizations. CoPs are groups of experts who share a common interest or topic and collectively wish to deepen their knowledge. This study highlights how CoPs are applied and used to promote and scale agile methods in large projects. To answer the research question, “How have Communities of Practice been used to support large-scale agile development teams?” we conducted a Systematic Literature Mapping (SLM) in the context of “Largescale Agile Methods” and “Communities of Practice”. Thus, from twenty-one studies, it was possible to synthesize three different themes and 13 categories that promote good practices in the adoption of CoPs to scale agile methods, including “coordination between teams”, “knowledge sharing”, and “open community”.