Challenges in the use of Scrum in Global Software Engineering and how to face them.

Abstract

Scrum is the most used Agile methodology in the world. At the same time, enterprises are strongly adopting remote work encouraged by the benefits provided by Global Software Engineering (GSE) and by isolation needed after Covid-19 pandemics. However, it is known that the Scrum methodology is usually applied in small and colocated teams to keep things agile, and distributed projects lack this characteristic, which can lead to problems. Therefore, the objective of this work is to identify the main bottlenecks of using Scrum in GSE and ways to mitigate these problems, through a Systematic Literature Review focusing on sumarizing the main challenges and solutions mapped by other Systematic Literature Reviews on this topic from 2013 to 2020. Results summarize major challenges faced by Scrum projects in GSE environments and suggest how to face them according to the literature. Then, we discuss the relation between the core topics concluding that the findings do not suggest a threat to the use of Scrum in GSE.