Systematic Literature Review Report on the Challenges of Agile Scrum

Agile in general and SCRUM Agile in particular have widely been employed in the software development arena ranging from small to medium to large and multinational projects. There are empirical studies, experience reports, and case studies that have reported the successes, issues and challenges of using the methodology in large-scale software development projects context. This Systematic Literature review employs the PRISMA methodology for searching case studies, experience reports and empirical research related to successes, issues, and challenges faced by software companies that fully harnessed Agile Scrum method for large-scale software development projects. A search protocol and context were prepared to guide the search task. Several papers published over more than a decade from multiple scientific databases, including IEEE Xplore and SCOPUS were analyzed. An iterative coding of themes had been employed to identify and categorize the key themes in the papers. Accordingly, eight main themes and 46 subthemes had been identified. These are Dependency issues, Agile Difficult to Implement, Multi-team Environment Challenges, Challenges of Requirement Engineering, Knowledge Issues, Resistance to Change, Organizational Structure and Boundaries, and Quality Assurance Challenges. Agile Difficult to Implement, Multi-team Environment Challenges and Challenges of Requirement Engineering are the most mentioned themes in order.