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 softwaredevelopment organizations. In GSD, the agile developmentbecomes more challenging due to the geographically,socio-cultural and temporal boundaries.Several frameworks have been developed to managethe agile development programs in large scale softwaredevelopment organizations e.g. scaled agile framework(SAFe), large-scale scrum (LeSS) and disciplined agiledelivery (DAD). However, these frameworks arelacking to provide the detail information about theagile development programs in GSD environment. Inthis study, the mentioned research gap has been triedto fill by conducting a systematic literature review(SLR) study to identify the key factors that couldpositively impact the agile development activities inGSD environment. Using SLR approach, a total of 15success factors were identified that could positivelyaffect the agile development in GSD environment.The identified success factors were further categorizedinto two broad categories of client and vendor GSDorganizations. Client-vendor classification was used toprovide a broad picture of agile programs, and theirrespective success factors. Moreover, the identifiedfactors were also mapped into six different categoriesbased on a model of process improvement.