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Exploring the challenges and benefits for scaling agile project management to large projects: a review

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Abstract

Organizations have increasingly applied agile project management; however, they face challenges in scaling up this approach to large projects. Thus, this study investigates the key barriers and benefits of scaling agile methods to large projects. The research approach is a literature review, applying bibliometrics and content analysis with Bibliometrix and UCINET software. We conducted a sampling process in the Web of Science and Scopus databases and surveyed 76 articles in depth. The results identified 53 barriers clustered into six main categories: organizational issues, managerial issues, agile method-specific barriers, product/process issues, customer issues, and team issues. Thirty-two benefits were coded and clustered into three categories: business, project, and team. Requirement management appears as a core topic, impacting both barriers and benefits for scaling agile project management. We identified a strong relationship between the barriers and benefits. These results can be used to create questionnaires to explore these barriers and benefits in practice.

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Acknowledgements

The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the Brazilian research funding agencies CNPq (National Council for Scientific and Technological Development).

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  1. Polytechnic School - University of São Paulo, Av. Prof. Luciano Gualberto, 1380, São Paulo, 05508-010, Brazil

    Paula de Oliveira Santos & Marly Monteiro de Carvalho

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  1. Paula de Oliveira Santos
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  2. Marly Monteiro de Carvalho
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Correspondence to Paula de Oliveira Santos.

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Santos, P.d., de Carvalho, M.M. Exploring the challenges and benefits for scaling agile project management to large projects: a review. Requirements Eng 27, 117–134 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00766-021-00363-3

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