Comparison between traditional plan-based and agile software processes according to team size & project domain (A systematic literature review)

Background: Agile Software development is becoming the most preferred approach for the process of software development. Since the traditional plan-based methods are rigorous and not flexible with changing requirements, some projects are postponed, go over budget, and are sometimes canceled or started from scratch. Questions remain on whether the traditional plan-based approaches will be replaced by agile. For effective, flexible and high-quality projects, organizations are shifting to flexible methods, where they can change the requirements at any stage of the development process. The purpose of this paper is to compare the plan-based and agile software development processes. The paper will discuss the art of deciding which methodology should be used with regard to the team size and the project domain. In the paper a systematic literature review covers 26 papers between 2000 and 2016. The papers are selected with reference to the size of the team and the domain of the project. The result of the paper illustrate that each methodology has a specific area which it best fits in. An organization should consider all factors and choose the methodology according to the situation. Finally, Agile best fits with small team sizes, for exploratory, and software & web-based projects. Traditional methods best fit large team sizes, for predictable, and reusable artifacts projects. However, they can co-exist.