A Systematic Literature Review On Root Causes Of Interaction Issues In Agile Software Development Teams

It has been more than two decades since the formulation of the values and principles for the enactment of Agile methods. Since then, the software development industry increasingly began using such methods, that are various. At the core of all Agile methods, however, lies an assumption: it is the interactions between people, not just processes and plans, that allows for successful product delivery and projects productivity. Hence, Agile methods typically focus on how groups of individuals with different but often complementary skill-sets can mutually interact or self-organise to build high-performing teams capable of developing, testing, and delivering software valuable for the users and stakeholders. The validation of such methodologies in the software development industry nevertheless requires a careful analysis of the potential challenges and impediments that agile teams may encounter during their collaboration; so, a practical investigation over the root causes of these potential issues. Our aim in this paper is twofold. Firstly, we want to gather all currently defined root causes of interaction issues and impediments in agile teams. Secondly, we intend to review and systematically analyse the most common of them in order to build appropriate mitigation strategies, which -we hope- will contribute to decreasing their potential occurrences in future works.