Agile Methods and Cyber-Physical Systems Development—A Review with Preliminary Analysis

Abstract

The software companies are using Agile methods and practices to tackle challenges in the rapidly changing environments and increasingly complex software systems. However, companies developing cyber physical systems (CPS) are still infancy in the use of Agile methods and hesitate to adopt. This systematic literature review was conducted in order to analyze the current trends of Agile methods use for CPS development. The search strategy resulted in 101 papers, of which 15 were identified as primary studies relevant to our research. The results show growing trend of Agile processes and Scrum is widely used reported for CPS development. The primary studies also exhibits a growing interest in teaching Agile in embedded systems, CPS and other engineering degree programs. The reported challenges included synchronization of software and hardware development, software and hardware developers use different vocabulary, lack of visibility and track of software releases and project progress. Additionally, lesson learned were extracted from the primary studies for guiding the practitioners interested in adopting Agile for CPS development.