Transitioning from Plan-driven Methods to Agile Methods - Preparation for a Systematic Literature Review

Abstract

Agile methods are becoming increasingly popular for software development projects in many organisations. Transitioning from the plan-driven methods to agile methods comes with a host of challenges, mainly due to the polar opposite ways in which these methods work. This paper describes the preparatory work done towards analysing the literature pertaining to the transition of organisations to swift methods from heavy-weight techniques, along end goal being a well-planned and well-organized review. A preliminary review provided in the existing literature suggests that organisations usually begin the transformation with formalized coaching, guidance sessions and documentation to introduce developers to agile methods, which often start as pilot projects with a small number of teams. Organisations attempting the transition face a variety of challenges - from bureaucratic processes that are not conducive to agile methods, to managerial systems that do not support an agile way of working. Existing literature reviews attempt to analyse a set of specific issues in the agile transformation process, or focus on primary studies on certain time limit and certain limit of agile method/integration of agile with other frameworks, limiting the scope of these studies. The research questions, and the inclusion criteria, and the search strategy used for selecting relevant papers are described.