How are Hybrid Development Approaches Organized? - A Systematic Literature Review

Agile software development methods promise shorter time-to-market and higher product quality, but lack the ability of long-term planning or coping with large projects. However, software companies often also want the ability of long-term planning, promised by traditional or plan-based methods. To benefit from the strengths of both approaches, software companies often use a combination of agile and plan-based methods, known as hybrid development approaches. These approaches strongly depend on the individual context and are customized. Therefore, companies have to organize their hybrid development approach individually. However, practitioners often have difficulties with the organization of hybrid approaches. The organization considers how the phases, activities, roles, and artifacts are arranged and connected. Research lacks the necessary detailed insight into how hybrid development approaches are organized to support practitioners. To gain better understanding of the organization of hybrid approaches, we conducted a systematic literature review to gather descriptions of hybrid approaches. We analyzed the found papers thoroughly and could identify three general patterns of how hybrid approaches are organized. We found that all these patterns are still based on Royce’s waterfall model and use the standard software engineering activities. Our findings shall help to lead further research and help practitioners to better organize their individual development approach.