Systematic Review of Success Factors for Scaling Agile Methods in Global Software Development Environment: A Client-Vendor Perspective

Presently, global software development (GSD) is gaining a much attention from the software development organizations. In GSD, the agile development becomes more challenging due to the geographically, socio-cultural and temporal boundaries. Several frameworks have been developed to manage the agile development programs in large scale software development organizations e.g. scaled agile framework (SAFe), large-scale scrum (LeSS) and disciplined agile delivery (DAD). However, these frameworks are lacking to provide the detail information about the agile development programs in GSD environment. In this study, the mentioned research gap has been tried to fill by conducting a systematic literature review (SLR) study to identify the key factors that could positively impact the agile development activities in GSD environment. Using SLR approach, a total of 15 success factors were identified that could positively affect the agile development in GSD environment. The identified success factors were further categorized into two broad categories of client and vendor GSD organizations. Client-vendor classification was used to provide a broad picture of agile programs, and their respective success factors. Moreover, the identified factors were also mapped into six different categories based on a model of process improvement.