Challenges in Agile Software Development: A
Systematic Literature Review
Widia Resti Fitriani1, Puji Rahayu2, Dana Indra Sensuse1
12
E-Government & E-Business Laboratory, Faculty of Computer Science, Universitas Indonesia
2
Faculty of Information Technology, Perbanas Institute, Jakarta, Indonesia
Email: widia.resti51@ui.ac.id, puji.rahayu@ui.ac.id, dana@cs.ui.ac.id
Abstract Agile methodology is popular in today software
development. Many studies has revealed that agile software
development bring significantly positive impact on software
development performance, quality, and user satisfaction. However,
it also has some challenges. This study tend to develop a systematic
literature review to identify the challenge of agile software
development (ASD) in general. The sample totaled 20 papers that
complied with the inclusion criteria. The distribution of papers
based on years, countries, and other criteria is presented in this
study. The result showed that there are 30 challenges in
implementing ASD methodology. Among 30 challenges in ASD, the
most significant challenges are team management and distributed
team, followed by requirement prioritization, documentation,
changing and over-scoping requirement, organization, process, and
progress monitoring and feedback.
Index Terms Agile Software Development, agile, challenges,
systematic literature review
I. INTRODUCTION
Organization nowadays face the competitive and rapidly
changing business environment. In order to compete with
competitors, organizations have to be able to respond to new
opportunities and markets, dynamic economic conditions and the
emergence of competing products and services [1]. In this extent,
information and communication technology (ICT) plays an
important role for organization to gain competitive advantages.
Since early 19th century, software development has attracted
the attention of many researchers [2]. Various programming
languages and models have been developed to facilitate software
development process, however as time goes by, the functionality
and design of software become more and more complex [2].
Software development can no longer only focus on technology
and programming and technical skills, but also need to involve
user and business needs [3]. Current business environment
requires organization to provide fast response, quality service
and cost efficiency software products that satisfy needs.
This implies that the traditional software development approach,
which requires comprehensive process flow and milestones, may
become no longer appropriate [1].
d for quicker and simpler approach in
software development became the basis of the rise of agile
software development methods during the late 19th century and
early 20th century [4]. It is believed that agile practices have
improved software development companies to manage
limited time and cost constraints, shifting market demands, and
Authorized licensed use limited to: Universitas Indonesia. Downloaded on July 21,2021 at 13:52:16 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
complex and changing requirements [5], [6].
Many studies has revealed that agile software development
bring significantly positive impact on software development
performance, quality, and user satisfaction. Moreover, according
to the 10th Annual State of Agile Report, the top benefits of agile
include: manage changing priorities (87%), team productivity
(85%), and project visibility (84%) [7]. That is why increasing
numbers of enterprises adopting agile each year.
While agile adoption is increasing, there are still challenges to
overcome. The key barriers to adopt agile usually associated with
culture, including company culture, change management,
resistance to change, and management support [7]. Beside
culture factors, there are more challenges that must be
considered. Once the organizations aware of these factors, they
will be more focused on preventing and overcome those
challenges to ensure ASD success. This study aims to develop a
systematic literature review on identifying challenges when
adopting agile software development.
Related to challenges in ASD, there are some previous
literature review in this area. But those reviews are only focus on
specific aspect of ASD, such as requirement engineering,
geographically distributed development and the use of CMMI in
ASD. The contributions of this paper are a list of ASD
challenges in general and a ranking of those challenges based on
their significance from the number of their occurrence in
literatures. The rest of this paper is organized as follows: Section
2 provides a short background on agile methods and related
works. Section 3 explains the research methodology. Section 4
presents the results of the study. Section 5 explains the
discussion of the result followed by Section 6 that presents the
conclusion, implication and limitation of the study.
II. RELATED WORK
Agile methodology is popular in today software development.
It drives researchers from all over the word to study this
phenomenon, including the state of the art, benefit, method, as
well as challenge in its development.
According to [8], agile software development (ASD) is a very
different approach compared to the traditional software
development approach, where decision making in ASD projects
is done in short iterations, and results are delivered in more
frequent and short-term decisions. In ASD, teams are
collaborated actively in each critical decision making that
determine the success or failure of a project [9]. Moreover, ASD
involves more interaction with clients throughout the project,
such as regular consultation and involving client in project
management decisions [8].
ASD has provided new benefit to software development
including fast solution, customer satisfaction, high quality
software and light-weight documentation [10]. In declaration of
its manifesto, ASD offers a better ways to develop software with
the following values1:
Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
Working software over comprehensive documentation
Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
Responding to change over following a plan.
Several examples of well-known agile methods include
Scrum, Extreme Programming (XP), lean software development,
Dynamic Systems Development Method (DSDM), Crystal
methods, Test Driven Development (TDD), and Feature Driven
Development (FDD) [10], [11]. Some activities and goals of
those methods might be different, however those methods have
shared the same focused values.
Related to previous literature, there are some examples of
literature review discussing agile methods challenges. The few
examples of literature review include [11], [12] and [13].
Systematic literature review by [11] aimed to identify practices
and challenges of agile requirements engineering (RE) from
literatures published between 2002 and 2013. Study by [11]
mapped out RE practices and challenges faced by agile teams
from the published literatures [11].
Another study by [12] aimed to conducted a systematic
literature review on challenges faced by geographically
distributed agile development (GDAD). It extracted data from
the literatures to identify challenges related to communication
and presented the techniques used to handle those challenges.
The research by [12] has provided a knowledge for practitioners
and researchers in GDAD area for future research priorities and
directions [12].
Other study by [13] also conducted a systematic literature
review on the use of CMMI (Capability Maturity Model
Integration) in combination with agile software development.
This study seeks to evaluate and synthesize results when ASD
combined with CMMI. It also presented and discussed the
benefits and limitations of the combination of these methods
[13].
The previous reviews highlight the challenges of agile
methods only in specific conditions and environments. While
this study aims to provide the list of ASD challenges in general
that may be faced by practitioners or organizations.
1
http://agilemanifesto.org/iso/en/manifesto.html
Authorized licensed use limited to: Universitas Indonesia. Downloaded on July 21,2021 at 13:52:16 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
III. METHODOLOGY
According to [14], a systematic literature review is method to
identify, evaluate and interpret all available studies relevant to a
defined research question, topic, or phenomenon of interest. It
aims to summarize knowledge production and enhance
understanding about what has been published about the theme
[15]. This method can help readers (researcher, professional or
student) in reviewing what has been investigated about the theme
and help them in further decision making process.
This study followed the guidelines proposed by [16] which
involves three main phases, namely planning, conducting and
reporting the review results.
A. Planning the Review
First of all, the research plan was developed to determine the
research question of interest, the keywords, and a set of inclusion
and exclusion criteria. The details of planning activities are
presented below.
1) Review Objectives and Research Question
Agile software development has become more accepted during
the last few years, because of its principles to enhance customer
satisfaction, adapt to changing necessities, recurrently deliver
working software, and close up cooperation of business people
and developers [17]. Although it has many advantages, agile
software development also has challenges and risks that may
mitigate its success rate. Therefore, it is important for
organizations and agile practitioners to understand the challenges
of agile software development before they adopt it. This study
aims to determine the current status of research in agile software
development challenges, with the following research questions:
RQ: What are the challenges of agile software development?
2) Develop Review Protocol
After defining research goals and question, the next step is
formulating a review protocol. It was done to determine the
specific systematic review methods that will be used in this study
[16]. It is necessary to have a pre-defined protocol to minimize
the possibility of researcher bias [16]. A review protocol in this
study involved search strategy, selection criteria, and inclusion
and exclusion criteria.
The search strategy involved defining the search space. This
study retrieved publications from ScienceDirect, but some papers
are downloaded from other electronic database such as Google
Scholar. This study used the search criteria that consist of two
parts SC1 and SC2, described as follows:
SC1 is a string composed of keywords including
SC2 is a string composed of keywords related to agile software
development (ASD) such as agile methodology agile
method agile approach agile development .
Those two parts of search criteria are combine using
 and agile method use. The authors red each paper and entered the
challenge OR problem OR issue OR obstacle relevant information related to the research in the excel sheet.
OR limitation agile methodology OR agile method Once the extraction was completed, the excel sheet was
OR agile approach or agile development reviewed and then the authors analysed the finding of the
To decide whether a study should be included in the review, researches to answer the research questions.
we specified the inclusion and exclusion criteria to answer the
research questions. The inclusion criteria were publications in
the period 2012 to 2016, use English language, journal type,
focused on the subject of computer science and relevant to the
search term defined above. Whereas the exclusion criteria were
studies that don't concentrate unequivocally on ASD methods,
yet just allude to ASD methods as a side theme; studies that don't
examine challenges in ASD; studies that do not meet inclusion
criteria; and keynote, opinion, talks, articles, remarks, and
account papers and presentations in slide with no related papers.
B. Conducting the Review
The review process was started once the review protocol has
been developed. This section presented the results of the search
and extraction of information from related databases.
1) Search and Selection of Primary Study
According to previously explained search strategy in Section
III.A.2), we searched the selected electronic databases and
retrieved the relevant studies. In this initial search, 2230 studies
were retrieved. A refined search is employed to limit the search
string only on abstract, title and keywords fields. This returns 78 Fig. 1. Flow diagram detailing the search and inclusion in this study
studies that contain defined search string in its abstract, title or 3) Assessment of Methodological Quality
keywords. The titles and abstracts of the studies were examined The quality criteria employed in this study is adopted from
comprehensively by applying the inclusion criteria. This first [11]. This procedure is done consecutively by each of authors to
round of classification resulted with 29 candidate studies. measure the methodological quality of the selected studies that
Next, in the second round of classification, we assessed the discussed agile software development challenges. These quality
candidate studies to apply the exclusion criteria. The authors criteria includes four questions to measure whether the study is
worked through the title and the abstract of the papers, and if satisfactory and will contribute to the scope [11]. The quality
relevant, further sections of the papers to make sure that they criteria is presented in Table I.
actually covered the pre-defined scope. This step resulted a final
selection of papers. Out of the 29 studies selected after applying TABLE I
QUALITY CRITERIA FOR STUDY SELECTION BASED ON [11]
the inclusion criteria, 9 were excluded because they did not
directly discuss any topic related to ASD challenges. Therefore, Criteria
Grading of Grade
our final selection consists of 20 studies. Fig. 1 presents the Response Obtained
process and the number of studies identified at each stage of (C1) Is the objective {1, 0.5, 0} 90%
review process. of research clearly (Yes,
defined nominally, No)
(C2) Is the context {1, 0.5, 0} 87.5%
2) Data Extraction and Synthesis of research well (Yes,
The next step is to define a data extraction process that addressed? nominally, No)
intended to determine the relevant information from the 20 (C3) Are the {1, 0.5, 0} 92.5%
included studies that relate to our research questions. This findings of research (Yes,
procedure incorporates the creation of excel data sheet clearly stated? nominally, No)
comprising of key viewpoints that is related to the research (C4) Based on the {1, 0.5, 0} 82.5%
objective. The following data were extracted from each study: findings, how (Yes,
title, year of publication, name of author(s), focus of the study, valuable is the nominally, No)
main findings, methodology, name of journal, country of study, research?

Authorized licensed use limited to: Universitas Indonesia. Downloaded on July 21,2021 at 13:52:16 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
 These quality criteria is also previously used by [18] for
assessing agile software development [18]. The detail question
about each criteria is presented in Table II.
TABLE II
QUALITY CRITERIA DETAIL QUESTION BASED ON [18]
(C1) Is the objective of research clearly defined?
Is there a rationale for why the study was undertaken?

Does the study present empirical data?

Is -to-
market, cost, or product or process quality)?
(C2) Is the context of research well addressed?
The industry in which products are used (e.g. banking, Fig. 2. Percentage score for quality assessment of studies. According
telecommunications, consumer goods, travel, etc) to Inayat et al (2008), <20% Poor, 20%-45% Fair, 46%-65% Good,
The nature of the software development organization (e.g. in-house 66%-85% Very Good, >86% Excellent [11].
department or independent software supplier)
The skills and experience of software staff (e.g. with a language, a
IV. RESULT
method, a tool, an application domain)
The type of software products used (e.g. a design tool, a compiler) This section described the result of the review as the final
The software processes being used (e.g. a company standard process, stage of the systematic literature review process. During the
the quality assurance procedures, the configuration management
process) search process in the database, initially 2230 items were
(C3) Are the findings of research clearly stated? identified using the search string defined previously in review
Are the findings explicit (e.g. magnitude of effect)? protocol. A refined search only in abstract, title and keywords
Has an adequate discussion of the evidence, both for and against the field resulted in 78 studies. Out of 78 papers, the authors selected
uments, been demonstrated?
Has the researcher discussed the credibility of their findings (e.g.
20 papers that actually covered the pre-defined scope, defining
triangulation, respondent validation, more than one analyst)? the analysis sample for this review.
Are limitations of the study discussed explicitly? The mean number of publication during the study period is 4,8
Are the findings discussed in relation to the original research questions? per year. The distribution of studies per year between 2012 and
Are the conclusions justified by the results
2016 is presented in Table III.
(C4) Based on the findings, how valuable is the research?
Does the researcher discuss the contribution the study makes to existing TABLE III
knowledge or understanding (e.g. do they consider the findings in DISTRIBUTION OF STUDIES PER YEAR BETWEEN 2012 AND 2016
relation to current practice or relevant research-based literature)?
Does the research identify new areas in which research is necessary? Year Frequency %
Does the researcher discuss whether or how the findings can be
transferred to other populations, or consider other ways in which the 2012 3 15
research can be used? 2013 3 15
2014 1 5
Each study was evaluated based on the quality assessment 2015 8 40
criteria presented in Table II. This study used ordinal scale (1, 2016 5 25
0.5, 0) for each quality criteria. Based on [11], ordinal scale is Total 20 100
better for categorisation and rating the studies, instead of a
dichotomous scale [11]. As the result presented in Table I, the Out of 20 studies, publications in Information and Software
question for the first criterion (C1) was addressed positively in Technology (55%) predominated, followed by The Journal of
90% of the selected studies. The question for the second criterion System and Software (20%) and Procedia Computer Science
(C2) was addressed positively in 87.5% of the selected studies. (10%) (Table IV).
The question for the third criterion (C3) was addressed positively Regarding the country where the studies are conducted, 6
in 92.5% of the selected studies. And finally the question for the (30%) out of 20 studies are conducted in various countries,
fourth criterion (C4) was addressed positively in 82.5% of the followed by 3 (5%) studies in India, and 2 (10%) studies
selected studies. Fig. 2 presented the normalised quality scores of conducted in Finland. Table V presented the distribution of
the selected studies. studies based on country.
According to the agile method used in the study, most of
studies analyzed in this review (75%) used general agile software

Authorized licensed use limited to: Universitas Indonesia. Downloaded on July 21,2021 at 13:52:16 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
development or mix method (Scrum, XP, etc.), while scrum only understand what kind of challenges they might face in applying
used in 20% of the studies and XP used in 5% of the studies. such methodology. The understanding about ASD challenges can
help organization to prepare better plan and estimation regarding
how to mitigate or handle those challenges to ensure higher
TABLE IV probability of success.
DISTRIBUTION OF STUDIES BASED ON PUBLICATION SOURCES Every research analyzed in this study demonstrated at least
Source Frequency %
one challenge related to ASD. Researchers classified ASD
related challenges into various classifications. For example,
Computers in Human Behavior 1 5 study by [6] classified risks of distributed agile development into
Information & Management 1 5 five categories based on
Information and Software Technology 11 55 organizational change, namely SDLC, project management,
Procedia Computer Science 2 10 group awareness, technology setup, and external stakeholder.
Another research by [19] classified project management
Procedia Technology 1 5
challenges faced by ASD into 4 different level, namely project
The Journal of System and Software 4 20 level, team level, individual level, and task level. On the other
Total 20 100 hand, [20] organized the challenges under two factors, namely
increased landscape complexity and lack of business
TABLE V involvement. Moreover, [5] classified ASD challenges focusing
DISTRIBUTION OF STUDIES BASED ON COUNTRY OF THE STUDY on continuous deployment into technical and social factors [5].
Differently other researchers had their own versions to classify
Country Frequency % challenges in ASD.
Arab Saudi 1 5 Based on ASD challenges obtained from the selected studies,
Australia 1 5 the first author searched the similarity in keyword and meaning
of each challenge. The challenges that has similar keyword or
Brazil 1 5
meaning are classified into the same challenge themes. To avoid
Finland 2 10 bias from different context that each literature has, the two other
India 3 15 authors reviewed and criticized the challenge themes that has
Malaysia 1 5 been created by the first author. Table VI shows the summary of
challenge themes derived from selected studies along with their
Netherland 1 5
frequency and related studies.
Norway 1 5
TABLE VI
Scandinavia 1 5 CHALLENGES IN ASD
Sweden 1 5 No Challenge Themes Freq Related Studies
UK 1 5 1 Team 9 Eloranta [21],
Various 6 30 Management Alzoubi [12], Drury
[9], De Melo [22],
Total 20 100
Hoda [19], Moe [8],
Claps [5], Silva
[13], Gregory [23]
V. DISCUSSION 2 Distributed Team 9 Alzoubi [12], De
This study aims to review the most current researches about Melo [22], Heikkilä
ASD to determine what challenges were most widely discussed [24], Bjarnason
in the studies. In the last five years, papers of the theme have [25], Shrivastava
been published in all years, with the largest number of items is in [6], Wale-Kolade
2015 by 40% (Table III). It is demonstrated that recently studies [26], Hoda [19],
on ASD have intensified. The fact that ASD is very popular is Eloranta [21],
also proved by this study which shows that related researches are Gregory [23]
conducted in various countries (Table V). 3 Requirement 6 Shrivastava [6],
Prioritization Drury [9], Moe [8],
Along with the rapid use of ASD in current software
Van Waardenburg
development in various organization, it is important to
[20], AL- [1],

Authorized licensed use limited to: Universitas Indonesia. Downloaded on July 21,2021 at 13:52:16 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
No Challenge Themes Freq Related Studies No Challenge Themes Freq Related Studies
Heikkilä [24] 19 Decision Making 2 Drury [9], Moe [8]
4 Documentation 6 Inayat [11], Claps 20 Budgeting 2 Inayat [11],
[5], Silva [13], Agrawal [2]
Eloranta [21], 21 Definition of done 2 Shrivastava [6],
Gregory [23], Moe [8]
Agrawal [2] 22 Product quality 2 Claps [5], Silva [13]
5 Changing and 6 Inayat [11], Hoda 23 Sustainability 2 Gregory [23], Silva
Over-scoping [19]. Bjarnason [13]
Requirement [25], Heikkilä [24],
24 Social 2 Claps [5], Silva [13]
Silva [13], Moe [8]
6 Organization 5 Gregory [23], Silva 25 Product backlog 2 Eloranta [21],
[13], Hoda [19], Shrivastava [6]
Agrawal [2], Van 26 Non-Functional 1 Inayat [11]
Waardenburg [20] Requirement
7 Process 5 Silva [13], Hoda 27 CMMI Alignment 1 Silva [13]
[19], Eloranta [21], 28 Cloud Computing 1 Almudarra [27]
Agrawal [2], Van
Waardenburg [20] 29 Individual Level 1 Hoda [19]
8 Progress 5 Eloranta [21], Claps 30 Scaling 1 Gregory [23]
Monitoring and [5], Shrivastava [6],
According to Table VI, there are 30 challenge themes derived
Feedback Agrawal [2], Silva
from the selected 20 studies. Those challenges covered various
[13]
aspects of ASD. The next question is which challenge that are
9 Familiarity with 4 Eloranta [21], Silva
ASD [13], Gregory [23], most significant in ASD? Among those challenges, team
Wale-Kolade [26] management and distributed which are respectively showed in 9
10 Customer 4 Inayat [11], Alzoubi out of 20 papers (45%) are predominated, followed by
[12], Eloranta [21], requirement prioritization (30%), documentation (30%),
Claps [5] distributed team (30%) and changing and over-scoping
11 Planning 4 Moe [8], Heikkilä requirement (30%). Challenges related to organization, process,
[24], Silva [13], and progress monitoring and feedback each appeared in 5 studies
Agrawal [2] (25%). Other challenges that only showed in less than 5 studies
12 Training 3 Agrawal [2], are considered insignificant challenges in this study because they
Gandomani [10], have presentations of less than 25%.The next paragraphs of this
Silva [13] section will discuss further about those significant challenges of
13 Testing 3 Shrivastava [6], ASD.
Silva [13], Eloranta The first and the most significant challenge is team
[21] management. Team management challenge themes in this study
14 Communication 3 Korkala [4], refer to all challenges related to team member design,
Alzoubi [12], coordination, behavior and other team practices. In their study,
Shrivastava [6] [13] defined challenges related to team including disagreements
15 Technical 3 Shrivastava [6], within the team, difficulty in introducing new member,
Claps [5], Silva [13] offshoring with a centralized team, team members substitution,
16 Deployment 3 Claps [5], Silva team behavior and resistance to change. While study by [5]
[13], Shrivastava [6] defined that changing team role, team coordination, and team
17 Architecture 3 Shrivastava [6], experience are the challenges related to team management. In
Inayat [11], other study, [23] presented ASD challenges related to team,
Heikkilä [24] including team practices, leadership, finding good people, and
18 Project 3 Shrivastava [6], individual motivation. Other related challenges are member turn
Management Agrawal [2],
over and team design choice [22], team configuration [12],
Heikkilä [24]
lacking team orientation and not confronting each other [8].

Authorized licensed use limited to: Universitas Indonesia. Downloaded on July 21,2021 at 13:52:16 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
 ASD team management related challenges is the most widely
discussed in the selected studies. This is reasonable because one
of manifesto in agile stated that ASD prioritize individuals and
interactions over processes and tools. It means team management
in ASD is very challenging and need special attention to ensure
the success of software development.
The second challenge themes in ASD is distributed team. One
of the most famous concept is geographically distributed agile
development (GDAD). GDAD appears to offer numerous
advantages, for example, low production cost, the chance to
include the most skilled designers around the globe and quicker
time to market [12]. However, distance difference in GDAD
offered challenge that impact to minimize communication
efficiency and effectiveness, increase the expense and logistics
of conducting face-to-face meetings, and reduce informal
interaction [12]. Other challenges related to distributed agile
team are differences in agile practices and standards of processes
followed by multiple teams [6], inconsistency in design
standards of distributed teams [6], inter-team coordination [22],
[24], and lack of shared work culture [26]. Achieving cross-
functional development team is also a challenge which is
mentioned in several studies [13], [19], [25], [21]. It is difficult
because it requires venturing outside areas of expertise and
spending time on learning new functionalities [19]. However,
cross-functional teams itself also offered challenges such as
improving several of the communication gaps [25], [13] and it is
insufficient for testing of large project [6].
The next challenge is requirement prioritization. Requirements
prioritization is defined as an action in which the significant
system requirements are identified and ordered based on their
importance [1]. The idea is that the highest priority requirement
has to be implemented first before the others [1]. This process is
complicated particularly when it involves multiple stakeholders
or customer with multiple competing requirements and priorities
who have to reach consensus under hectic and often disoriented
situations [1][9]. According to [24], requirement prioritization is
challenging because customers considered most of the features
are mandatory and similarly important and they didn't have
clearly defined criteria for requirements prioritization [24]. The
difficulties in getting prioritized requirements from customers
will complicate the team to understand what features to develop
and deliver first, creating a threat to the business value generated
[20].
Documentation is the next challenge of ASD defined in this
study. Minimal documentation is a significant challenge of ASD
methodology for development teams [2], [11]. Little or no
documentation on ASD creates difficulty in communicating
requirement changes to customers or project team member at
distributed geographical locations [11]. The minimum
documentation will also lead to lack of understanding of the
process by novice developers [5]. In their study, [13] mentioned
Authorized licensed use limited to: Universitas Indonesia. Downloaded on July 21,2021 at 13:52:16 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
that agile challenges related to documentation are limitations
associated with documentation of requirements or changes,
producing documentary evidence, and the need to manage
artifacts other than code [13]. Another perspective from
documentation related challenge in ASD is tendency to use
traditional waterfall thinking by creating big requirement
documents for specification [21]. As the results, system
requirements as a whole are not well understood by the team,
because they are hard to find from a big documents [21].
The next challenge in ASD is changing and over-scoping
requirement. ASD has flexible nature that can accommodate the
change of requirements. However, it can lead to several
difficulties when evaluating the consequences of these changes
[11]. Direct and frequent interaction with customers can facilitate
customer to propose unreasonable and unsystematic change
requests that caused a dilemma for development team to follow
ASD guidelines of no changes within sprints or to accommodate
[19]. Study by [13]
found that challenges related to requirement includes difficulty in
managing and documenting requirement histories, estimates,
and change, generating the traceability matrix, performing
analysis, and dealing better with secure software requirements
[13]. Other challenge is lack of understanding of requirement
complexity from the planning meeting, and this brought changes
in the plans during an iteration [8]. In addition, challenge related
to over-scoping requirement is also discussed in this themes.
Over-scoping requirement is caused by lack of attention to
overall goals and low development involvement in early stages
[25].
Organization related challenges in ASD are mentioned in 5 out
of 20 studies. Study by [23] defined organizational challenges
faced by agile practitioner including business & IT
transformation, management buy-in & understanding, agile in a
non-agile environment, organization commitment and
engagement to adopt agile and also fear of new approach [23].
Other challenges include organizational culture [12],
organizational learning [13], senior management sponsorship and
support [19], and developing control while maintaining agility
[13].
The next challenge theme is related to process. Study by [13]
found that challenges of ASD (combined with CMMI) related to
process include lack of best practice, lack of guidance for
process improvement, difficulty of generalizing the results, lack
of a general solution that fits all cases, difficulties related to
mapping, human factors and resistance to change, lack of support
in specific technical environments, and lack of dealing with task
dependencies [13]. In [19] task dependency is also a challenge in
ASD that refers to a situation where a task can begin only when
the previous task has completed. It can cause the cancellation of
sprints and furthermore can cause lower project performance and
delayed product delivery [19]. Another challenge related to
process are varying sprint length and too long sprint. They might Although other challenges of ASD are also important to
lead to lack of commitment to sprint goals because a sprint consider, this study only discussed further about the top eight of
length might be extended, no definite delivery date for product these challenges. This study only explained and listed ASD
increment, prevent the client from getting a required feature in challenges, therefore future research can add the mitigation or
time as requirement priorities may change quickly, and more solution techniques to resolve each challenge. This study only
interruptions from client may happen [21]. Other challenges retrieved the papers from ScienceDirect publisher in the last 5
related to process are regular compliance [2], different process years. To broaden the understanding on related research, future
approaches, concurrent development streams and development in study should retrieve more papers from other publication
separated layer[20]. databases.
Progress monitoring and feedback is the last challenge which
is discussed in 5 out of 20 studies. Study by [21] found that ASD REFERENCES
is lack of progress monitoring, has long or no feedback loops, [1] R. H. AL-
and often seize invisible progress [21]. Related to feedback, ASD Procedia Technol., vol. 11,
no. Iceei, pp. 733 739, 2013.
(especially Scrum) has sprint review phase at the end of the [2]
sprint where the Product Owner and key stakeholders assess the Limitations of Agile Methods in Industry Using Secure Google
progress of product deliverable and provide feedback [21]. Procedia Comput. Sci., vol. 78, no. December 2015, pp. 291
Often, team has difficulties to have direct contact with customer 297, 2016.
[3] D. Avison and G. Fitzgerald, Information Systems Development:
and sometimes customer is not interested in the project that led Methodologies, Techniques, and Tools, 4th editio. McGraw Hill, 2006.
to lacking understanding of the team whether they are [4]
developing the right product or not [21]. Consequently, because improving communication in globally distributed agile software
J. Syst. Softw., vol. 95, pp. 122 140, 2014.
feedback from customer is only received after the customer starts [5]
using the product, there is a possibility of changes to the product continuous deployment: Technical and social challenges along the
at a late phase of development that may cause a lot of rework Inf. Softw. Technol., vol. 57, no. 1, pp. 21 31, 2015.
[6] S. V. Shrivastava and
[21]. Furthermore, the progress of the work is not well presented. Inf. Softw. Technol., vol. 58, pp. 373 387,
It can led to lacking of progress awareness of stakeholder and 2015.
even the teams, risk of failing to deliver all promised features in [7]
[8] -
a sprint, stakeholders can't see what is going on and may not Inf.
know about the issues on the team [21]. Other challenges are Softw. Technol., vol. 54, no. 8, pp. 853 865, 2012.
related to meeting. It is mentioned that ASD has a lot of meeting [9]
J. Syst. Softw., vol. 85, no. 6, pp.
[2] but these meeting is ineffective because it only lasted for 15
1239 1254, 2012.
minutes [6]. There is also little attention given to reviews and [10] T. J. Gandomani, H. Zulzalil, A. A. Abdul Ghani, A. B. Abu, and R. M.
meetings from management [13]. nadequate and dysfunctional training on agile
Inf. Softw. Technol.,
vol. 57, no. 1, pp. 295 309, 2015.
VI. CONCLUSION [11] I. Inayat, S. S. Salim, S. Marczak, M. Daneva, and S. Shamshirband,
The analyzed studies point towards the researchers current w on agile requirements engineering
Comput. Human Behav., vol. 51, no. 0, p. -,
concerns with the challenges in agile software development 2014.
(ASD). This paper aims to determine which ASD challenges are [12] Y. I. Alzoubi, A. Q. Gill, and A. Al-
significant according to the number of studies discussed them. geographically distributed agile development communication
Inf. Manag., vol. 53, pp. 22 37,
There are 30 challenges in implementing ASD methodology 2015.
derived from the analyzed studies. Among 30 challenges in [13] F. Selleri Silva, F. S. F. Soares, A. L. Peres, I. M. De Azevedo, A. P. L.
ASD, the most significant challenges are team management and
together with agile software development: A systemati Inf.
distributed team, followed by requirement prioritization, Softw. Technol., vol. 58, pp. 20 43, 2015.
documentation, changing and over-scoping requirement, [14]
organization, process, and progress monitoring and feedback. Keele, UK, Keele Univ., vol. 33, no. TR/SE-0401, p. 28, 2004.
[15] E. S. B. Rocha, P. Nagliate, C. E. B. Furlan, K. J. Rocha, M. A.
These challenges significantly affect quality and performance
of ASD. Therefore the implication of this study is to inform Rev. Lat. Am. Enfermagem, vol. 20,
organizations or practitioners who wish to use ASD methodology no. 2, pp. 392 400, 2012.
[16]
to consider those challenge before starting their projects.
Literature reviews i Engineering,
Furthermore, this study also provided a list of ASD challenges vol. 45, no. 4ve, p. 1051, 2007.
and ranked them based on their significance in literatures. [17]
Scrum Based Framework for E- 130,

Authorized licensed use limited to: Universitas Indonesia. Downloaded on July 21,2021 at 13:52:16 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
 2014. [24] V. T. Heikkila, M. Paasivaara, K. Rautiainen, C. Lassenius, T. Toivola,
[18] pirical studies of agile software -scale scrum with
Inf. Softw. Technol., vol. 50, no. multiple stakeholders - A longitudinal case study at F-secure
9 10, pp. 833 859, 2008. Inf. Softw. Technol., vol. 57, no. 1, pp. 116 140, 2015.
[19] -Level Agile Project Management [25]
Challenges: A Self- J. Syst. Softw., vol. you can chew? A case study on causes and effects of overscoping in
117, pp. 245 257, 2016. large- Inf. Softw. Technol., vol. 54, no. 10,
[20] pp. 1107 1124, 2012.
Inf. Softw. Technol., vol. 55, no. 12, pp. 2154 2171, 2013. [26] A. Y. Wale- -
[21] V.- organisational agile development project: Tactics developed by
ScrumBut An empirical study of Scrum anti- Inf. Softw. J. Syst. Softw., vol. 100, pp. 54 66, 2015.
Technol., vol. 74, pp. 194 203, 2016. [27]
[22] Procedia
Inf. Softw. Comput. Sci., vol. 52, pp. 1133 1140, 2015.
Technol., vol. 55, no. 2, pp. 412 427, 2013.
[23] P. Gregory, L. Barroca, H. Sharp, A. Deshpande, K. Taylor, A. D. A.

Inf. Softw. Technol., vol. 75, pp. 26 38,

2016.

Authorized licensed use limited to: Universitas Indonesia. Downloaded on July 21,2021 at 13:52:16 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
Authorized licensed use limited to: Universitas Indonesia. Downloaded on July 21,2021 at 13:52:16 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.