Abstract
Communication plays an important role in Agile Software Development (ASD). In each ASD practice (e.g., stand-up or retrospective meetings), different communication practices and channels are adopted by different companies. Several works have analyzed the impact of communication channels and practices. However, there are no secondary studies summarizing their impact on ASD. This study presents a Systematic Mapping Study (SMS) that aggregates, summarizes, and discusses the results of 25 relevant primary studies concerning the impact of communication channels and practices in ASD. We followed the well-known systematic mapping methodology in software engineering and analyzed empirical studies published before the end of June 2018. The results of our study have yielded several strategies that can be adopted by practitioners. Communication practices are context dependent. In the case of a distributed team, blended usage of rich-media communication tools, such as shared mind-map tools, videoconferencing, and promoting the exchange of team members between teams, is beneficial. In conclusion, communication can be expensive if teams do not apply the right strategies. Future research direction is to understand how to maximize product quality while reducing communication cost and how to identify the most beneficial communication strategy for the different stages of ASD.
Highlights
Constant communication and sharing information about a project's development among the whole team is essential
The goal of this study is to investigate the role of communication in Agile Software Development (ASD), focusing on channels and practices used during the communication process
To achieve goal of this study we addressed the following Research Questions (RQs): (RQ1) What is currently known about communication in ASD? (RQ2) Which communication channels have been studied in ASD? (RQ3) What are the best communication practices commonly adopted in ASD?
Summary
Constant communication and sharing information about a project's development among the whole team is essential. Agile methods preaching the empowered and self-organizing development teams where focus is on constant communication and information sharing [18]. One of the most important factors for project success is continuous and active communication with the customer and the team members [16], effective communication among developers, operations, support, customers, management, and business areas [19]. Communication plays an important role in terms of coordination among the different teams involved, in order to manage dependencies between the actors in the process [6] [7] [8]. Poor team communication is often leads to failure for engineering projects Such poor communication become more complex in distributed software development. Communication is not always beneficial and can even decrease productivity [17]
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