Transformation towards agile software product line engineering in large companies: A literature review

Abstract

Almost all companies struggle with software systems that are getting increasingly complex. Therefore, in particular large companies often use software product lines, which provide an efficient way to manage software reuse as well as the high complexity. However, software product lines seem to be too slow to react to changes. Agile development approaches promise to meet this demand. At the same time, integrating an agile approach is not always easy. Consequently, there is a need for a transformation model that supports the agile transformation without harming the benefits of software product lines. In this paper, we present the results of a literature review regarding agile transformation in large software companies. Our results summarize the insights from 85 papers and present a list of 20 tasks and tasks that are recommended by several researchers to be considered during the transformation. On the basis of these results, we create an agile transformation model—the so‐called “agile hamburger”—that contains these tasks and preserves software product lines. Since the model is rather coarse grained and generic, we also support the adaption to different teams by presenting an assessment model tailored to the demands of the automotive domain.

Comparing Methods for Large-Scale Agile Software Development: A Systematic Literature Review

“…After removing duplicates, the titles and abstracts of the remaining articles were read. We identified 19 relevant systematic literature reviews in this area ( [4], [6], [7], [9], [17], [20], [21], [22], [23], [33], [34], [35], [36], [37], [38], [39], [40], [41], [42]). By reading the titles of articles that cite these reviews, we identified three more relevant articles ( [18], [43], [44]).…”

“…challenges, barriers, or success factors were reported in an aggregated manner and did not provide method-specific information. This is also the case of the agile and SPL studies [33], [37] or Lean [36], [44] Ten reviews on large-scale agile development were considered most relevant to this study ( [6], [7], [8], [9], [18], [20], [21], [22], [23], [43]). In terms of the review method, only five out of ten reviews were guided by well-known literature review approaches ( [6], [7], [21], [22], [23]).…”

Agile Transformation at Scale: A Tertiary Study

“…Klünder et al [14] answer 4 questions on large-scale agile transformations. On the first question 'Does any transformation model for large companies exist that-in particular-preserves already existing SPLs?'…”

“…Our analysis focused on the success factors and/or challenges in scaled agile transformation presented in each paper, though we note this was not always the primary focus of every study. For example, study [14] presents literature review findings from primary studies a bit differently; this paper identifies preconditions and tasks from the primary studies that exist for large-scale agile transformation to be successful. We mapped preconditions and tasks to success factors to facilitate analysis of these studies.…”

“…Analyzing the papers from a common perspective was also difficult as often the studies focused on different aspects. For example, [13] focused on stakeholder perspectives, [11] started with scaled agile frameworks (SAFe and LeSS), [14] focused on software product line engineering, and [15] focused on a design perspective. Therefore, our identification of common success and/or challenge factors is bounded by the perspectives of the included secondary studies.…”