The dissipation of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has already taken on pandemic proportions, affecting over 100 countries in a couple of weeks. The evolution of the disease and its economic impact is highly uncertain, which brings challenges for newly created software companies. Software startups are companies that create innovative software products and services in a dynamic and fast-growing market. Agile Software Methods aims to enable startups in responding to uncertainty caused by Covid-19. This paper investigates the impact of Covid-19 in a real software startup context to understand how they have reacted against uncertainties caused by Covid-19. As a research methodology, action research within Di2Win, a Brazilian software startup, has been applied. The study was carried out throughout six sprints, during the quarantine. Practices employed to mitigate threats while simultaneously allowing teams to remain open to opportunities and challenges are detailed. This paper shares lessons learned that could help agile software startups improve their way of work in an uncertain environment caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.

Current research has shown that global software development (GSD) organizations rely on agile methods to guarantee better communication, coordination, and improved productivity. Moreover, as organizations continue to grow, they are facing large-scale global project challenges and complexity, leading to an urge to scale agile practices for better coordination. However, it has been surprising to find that approaches in the literature on scaling agile for large and global projects remain unclear. In addition, to identify and highlight which agile scales practices reported in studies on Agile GSD (AGSD) are related to SAFe practices, we conducted a systematic literature review. In addition, we mapped AGSD practices to the SAFe 5.0 framework to provide bases for those starting on such a journey. In our study, we found 24 articles related to the scaling of agile practices in a global environment, and 44 scaling agile practices that embrace 95 SAFe 5.0 components, including "agile coaching," "agile architecture," and "system demo". This study provides an in-depth scientific investigation on how SAFe can be associated with global teams applying GSD. The results and findings will benefit researchers and practitioners in conducting further research and provide more dedicated solutions for challenges to scaling agile in the context of GSD.

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Agile practices in large-scale distributed organizations are becoming a norm. Current research shows that large-scale projects are betting on agile scaling frameworks to coordinate better the several teams that compose large-scale organizations. However, the literature still needs further investigation on the scaling and tailoring of agile practices that distributed teams use in large-scale settings. Due to it, we aim to conduct a systematic literature review regarding the tailored agile practices used by distributed teams that use scaling agile frameworks in large-scale organizations. Further, we aim to conduct a case study on a large-scale Brazilian fintech company with more than 3000 employees. This company uses the Spotify model to organize its software product development.

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