Modeling in Agile Software Development: A Systematic Literature Review

Agile methods have been used for over than a decade. However, there are limitations when using agile methods in complex, large-scale projects and in distributed teams. Traditional software design techniques, like modeling, could help overcome these limitations. This paper aims to identify modeling aspects in agile software development, presenting the state-of-art in this area, by means of a systematic literature review. The results show the use of modeling practices in agile methods, throughout the project, especially in the first sprints. The main modeling languages used are UML, informal diagrams, CRC cards and textual language. There are attempts of using agile with formal methods and modeldriven development, without consistent results of the effectiveness of these proposals. Finally, we observed that the literature lacks conclusive experiments on modeling in projects using agile methods.