The Diversity of Approaches to Support Software Project

Management in the Agile Context: Trends, Comparisons and Gaps

Elielton da Costa Carvalho

and Sandro Ronaldo Bezerra Oliveira

Graduate Program in Computer Sciense, Institute of Exact and Natural Sciences, Federal University of Pará,

Belém, Pará, Brazil

Keywords: Software Project Management, Project Management Approaches, Systematic Review of Literature.

Abstract: The literature has reported a significant number of approaches to support software development teams. Due

to this diversity of approaches, the process of choosing which one is the most suitable for a given project

becomes a complex task as new approaches emerge. In addition, there has been no comprehensive work on

what these project management approaches are, nor what their main advantages and limitations are. Therefore,

it becomes important to research the characteristics of these approaches and map them to minimize decision

challenges. Therefore, the objective of this work is to identify primary studies in software engineering that

present approaches to support the management of software projects in the agile context. To achieve this goal,

we conducted a systematic review study and selected 65 studies on software project management approaches.

From these studies, we identified eight different types of approaches, with software being the most used ap-

proaches in this context. In addition, nine project areas were identified in which these approaches focus,

among which "Schedule" and "Quality" stand out as the areas with the greatest focus by the approaches.

Finally, we identified that the "Planning" is the phase of the project in which the approaches place more

emphasis.

1 INTRODUCTION

Alignment between project management and

business strategy can significantly increase the

chances of organizations achieving their goals, as

well as improving their performance (Gomes and

Romão, 2016). In addition, agile development

favoured the software industry, but required

approaches that meet this new development

paradigm. In this way, exploring new approaches can

help organizations adapt more quickly to the new

realities of the economy (Parsi, 2021).

The literature has reported a significant number of

approaches (software, methodology, method, model,

tool, technique, framework, practice) to support

software development teams. Due to this diversity of

approaches, the process of choosing which one is the

most suitable for a given project becomes a complex

task as new approaches emerge. It is observed,

therefore, that the challenges in agile development

have been and continue to be explored, but there has

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9819-5357

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8929-5145

not been any comprehensive work on what these

project management approaches are, nor what are

their main advantages and limitations, which

indicates the need for a further research in this area

(Shrivastava and Rathod, 2017).

It is therefore important to research the

characteristics of these approaches and map them to

minimize decision challenges. Additionally, it is also

necessary to investigate how they are used and the

lessons learned from their use, in order to identify

opportunities for improvement (Varajão et al., 2017).

Thus, the objective of this work is to identify primary

studies in software engineering that present

approaches to support the software projects

management in the agile context.

To achieve this goal, we performed a systematic

review study and selected 65 studies on approaches to

software project management. In our results, we

identified 8 types of distinct approaches, 9 areas that

these approaches focus on, as well as 5 project phases

that they emphasize.

138

Carvalho, E. and Oliveira, S.

The Diversity of Approaches to Support Software Project Management in the Agile Context: Trends, Comparisons and Gaps.

DOI: 10.5220/0011063500003176

In Proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Evaluation of Novel Approaches to Software Engineering (ENASE 2022), pages 138-149

ISBN: 978-989-758-568-5; ISSN: 2184-4895

In addition to this introductory section, this work

is structured as follows: Section 2 presents some

concepts on the topic of this research, Section 3

details the study design, Section 4 presents the results,

Section 5 presents the discussions, Section 6

addresses some threats to the validity of this work,

Section 7 brings some related works and Section 8

closes this work by presenting the conclusions.

2 BACKGROUND

This section introduces concepts related to software

project management and software project

management approaches.

The PMBOK – Project Management Body of

Knowledge (2017) defines a project as a temporary

effort undertaken to create a unique product, service

or result. In turn, project management is defined as

the application of knowledge, skills, tools and

techniques to project activities in order to fulfill

project requirements. Banica et al. (2018) state that

the main objective of project management is to

provide expected results with quality, planned time,

and approved costs, in addition to being essential to

take care of risks. The PMBOK Guide (2017) also

mentions that several approaches can be used to assist

the project manager and support team collaboration.

Project management approaches are means that

aim to support the whole process or part of the

management process. These approaches can be

software, methodologies, practices, methods,

frameworks, models, among others (Kostalova et al.,

2015). These approaches contribute to a significant

gain in the efficiency and effectiveness of project

management. In addition, they allow a change in the

way of managing projects and give professionals

greater decision-making power, especially project

managers (Retnowardhani and Suroso, 2019). The

authors also reinforce that organizations should use

them to obtain better results in their projects.

3 STUDY DESIGN

This section presents the objectives of the work, the

research questions and the method used.

3.1 Goal and Research Question

This study aims to identify the approaches used to

support the software projects management in agile

context. We are interested in identifying the type of

approach, where it is applied within the project, its

main contributions and limitations, as well as the

form of evaluation used by its developers.

To formalize the objective of this study, the Goal-

Question-Metric (GQM) defined by Basili (1992)

was used. Thus, this study seeks to:

• Analyze: primary studies, through a Systematic

Literature Review (SLR),

• In order to: identify the approaches used in

software project management (SPM) that are

reported in the specialized literature,

• Regarding: the definition, use and evaluation of

these approaches,

• From the point of view of: researchers,

organizations and professionals in software

project management,

• In context: industrial and academic agile

software development,

Thus, we propose the following research

questions (RQ):

• RQ1: What is the name and type of approach? –

The objective is to identify the type of SPM

approach that was used in the work, eg method,

software, technique, etc., as well as the name of

the approach,

• RQ2: What are the strengths and limitations of

the approach? – The objective is to identify the

main points that deal with the advantages and

disadvantages of using the identified approach,

• RQ3: How was the approach evaluated? – The

objective is to identify the method used to

evaluate the use of the approach.

3.2 Method

To achieve the objective of this work, an SLR was

conducted. SLR is an evidence-based secondary

study method to systematically identify, analyze and

interpret all relevant documents related to a specific

research question (Kitchenham and Charters, 2007).

We performed the SLR from May/2021 to

January/2022. The study was organized in four

stages, adapted from (Kitchenham and Charters,

2007; Petersen et al., 2015), as follows:

• Step 1 – Definition of research questions: in this

step, three research questions were defined based

on the objective of the study (Subsection 3.1),

• Step 2 – Search: in this stage, based on the

research questions, a replicable process was

defined for carrying out the search for studies in

selected scientific bases (Subsection 3.3),

• Step 3 – Study selection: in this step a replicable

process was defined and applied to select only

The Diversity of Approaches to Support Software Project Management in the Agile Context: Trends, Comparisons and Gaps

139

the relevant studies according to the objective of

this work (Subsection 3.4),

• Step 4 – Study classification and data extraction:

in this step, based on the research questions, a

strategy was defined to: (i) map the relevant data

from the primary studies (Subsection 3.5) and

(ii) present the results of the work (Section 4).

Two researchers participated in the planning and

execution of the work: a graduate student in

Computer Science and a professor / researcher with a

PhD in Software Engineering.

3.3 Search Strategy

The search took place in an automated way through a

string formed by a series of keywords and their

respective synonyms. These keywords were defined

based on the research questions, from the PICOC

(Population, Intervention, Comparison, Outcomes

and Context) structure suggested by Kitchenham and

Charters (2007).

However, "Comparison" and "Intervention" are

not part of the scope of this work. In this way, the

string was formulated with terms related to (i)

population, (ii) outcome and (iii) context. The terms

used were:

• Population: project management,

• Result: tool, method, technique, model,

technology, practice, standard, guide, work

product, methodology, framework, process,

principle, theme and profile,

• Context: software and agile.

Thus, we got the following search string:

(“project management”) AND (“tool” OR “method”

OR “technique” OR “model” OR “technolog*” OR

“practice” OR “pattern” OR “standard” OR

“guide” OR “work product” OR “methodolog*” OR

“framework” OR “process” OR “principle” OR

“theme” OR “profile”) AND (“software”) AND

(“agile”).

The search string was applied to the IEEE Xplore

and ACM DL databases. We did not search the EI

COMPENDEX and SCOPUS because, according to

the results of Souza et al. (2018), there was a high rate

of redundancy.

3.4 Study Selection

In this step of the work, inclusion (IC) and exclusion

(EC) criteria were applied in order to select only the

relevant works that answered our research questions.

The IC and EC are presented below.

• IC: Studies that present some software project

management approach applied in the agile

context and studies that evaluated the approach

used,

• EC: Studies that are not written in English,

studies not available for download openly or

through the institutional IP of the researchers,

studies such as workshop reports, posters,

presentations, speaker keynotes, books, theses

and dissertations.

Each of the studies underwent a selection process

consisting of four steps: (i) two researchers read the

titles and abstracts of all studies and applied the

exclusion criteria, this step was defined as pre-

selection, (ii) the same researchers discussed

differences in the application of exclusion criteria to

reach a consensus, (iii) the researchers read the title

and abstract, and the full text if necessary, of the

studies selected in the first step to apply the inclusion

criteria, (iv) the researchers discussed differences in

the application of exclusion criteria to reach a

consensus.

Regarding the IEEE, a total of 1339 studies were

returned, among which 1235 were excluded after pre-

selection, leaving 104 studies. About ACM, 1486

studies were returned when running the search string.

Of this total, 1233 were excluded in the pre-selection.

Thus, 253 studies remained. After pre-selection, the

remaining 357 primary study were read in full and

submitted to the IC and EC.

The process resulted in 65 primary studies (25

from IEEE and 40 from ACM) (available at

https://zenodo.org/record/5876282#.YefGov7MLIV).

3.5 Study Classification and Data

Extraction

To collect the necessary data that answer the research

questions defined for this work, a researcher was

responsible for reading the 65 selected studies.

Data analysis aims to classify the studies

according to the proposed research questions.

Therefore, the result of this SLR should map and

classify studies regarding: the presence of software

project management approaches, the project area and

phase approach was used, the advantages and

disadvantages of its use, and the form of evaluation

of the approach.

4 RESULTS

This section presents the results of SLR. Subsection

4.1 presents an overview of the results. Subsections

4.2, 4.3, and 4.4 describe the results for RQ1, RQ2,

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and RQ3, respectively. In these subsections, the

primary studies will be referenced and identified by

codes and are available at the URL presented in

Subsection 3.4.

4.1 Overview

SLR looked for works between the years 2001 and

2021. However, the 65 selected primary studies are

distributed between the years 2004 and 2021, as

shown in Figure 1. Still based on Figure 1, it is

possible to notice that, despite a decrease in the

number of studies after 2008, the trend is for a growth

in the number of publications related to the subject of

this work, with a sharper peak from 2015. However,

it is also noted that the years 2020 and 2021 showed

a decrease significant in the number of publications.

According to Yanow and Good (2020), there was a

reduction in the number of publications in 2020 as

many universities and companies had to reduce their

research activities, as the laboratories were closed. It

should also be taken into account that the number of

studies in 2021 is lower as a result of the period of

execution of this work.

Figure 1: Distribution of studies per year.

Figure 2 presents the project areas where the

identified approaches are used. Based on this figure,

it is possible to verify that the focus of the approaches

is mainly focused on the areas of schedule (22

studies), quality (19 studies) and communications (17

studies), as is the case of the following primary

studies: [PS61], [PS59] and [PS30], respectively.

Figure 3 illustrates the project phases where the

approaches identified in this work are used. It is

possible to note that the approaches give more

emphasis to the project planning phase (36 studies),

in addition to the monitoring and control (28 studies)

of the same, as can be exemplified by [PS64] and

[PS10], respectively.

It is important to note that some studies focus on

more than one phase of the project at the same time,

as is the case, for example, of the following studies:

[PS07, PS12, PS28, PS54, PS65]. The same applies

to the project areas, because, as in the phases, there

are studies that are focused on more than one area

simultaneously, for example: [PS04, PS34, PS39,

PS47, PS57].

Figure 2: Project areas where identified approaches are

used.

Figure 3: Project phases where identified approaches are

used.

4.2 Type of Approach

This subsection presents results referring to RQ1

(“What is the name and type of approach?”).

From the selected studies, it was possible to

identify eight types of approaches, they are: software,

methodology, method, model, tool, technique,

framework and practice. Figure 4 illustrates the types

of approaches identified, as well as the number of

studies that address each of them.

Still based on Figure 4, it is possible to verify that

“software” is the most common type of approach used

to support the software projects management, this

approach being identified in 15 studies. Soon after,

approaches of the “methodology” type are the ones

that stand out the most, developed and / or used in 12

studies. Finally, among the types of approaches that

are most used, “method” appears in third place, with

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141

this type of approach being identified in 11 primary

studies.

It is worth noting that “framework” and “practice”

approaches are the least used, according to data

extracted from primary studies. Such approaches

were observed only in four and two studies,

respectively.

Figure 4: Types of approaches identified.

4.2.1 Software

As mentioned earlier, software is the most common

type of approach used to support software project

management. Table 1 presents the studies that present

this type of approach.

Table 1: Studies that present a “Software” approach.

Studies that present a “Software” approach

[PS01], [PS02], [PS06], [PS07], [PS10], [PS14], [PS16],

[PS21], [PS30], [PS40], [PS43], [PS44], [PS52], [PS61],

[PS62]

Morgan and Maurer (2006) [PS44] report in their

study the use of MasePlanner. MasePlanner is

software aimed at planning communication in the

project. It is software that, according to the authors,

supports interactions, facilitating non-verbal

communication. MasePlanner provides teams with a

digital environment that supports information

management in addition to natural interactions. With

respect to support for natural interaction, MasePlaner

allows planning work products to be created, edited

and organized in a similar way to paper planning

meetings.

More recently, Alhazmi and Huang (2018)

[PS01] developed the Sprint Planning Decision

Support System (SPESS). This software aims to assist

managers in sprint planning. SPESS is primarily

based on three factors: developer competence,

developer seniority, and task dependency. This tool

aims to assign the tasks of each Sprint to the

developers ensuring that each team member

contributes to the maximum of their potential, and the

project planning is optimized for the shortest possible

time.

The other studies that use software are focused on

communication [PS06, PS10, PS30, PS40, PS52],

quality [PS02, PS07, PS14, PS16, PS62], schedule

[PS07, PS14, PS43, PS61], scope [PS07] and

stakeholders [PS21]. It is worth noting that software

does not necessarily serve only one area of the

project. Begosso et al. (2019) [PS07], for example,

present SimScrumF. This software is a game that

focuses on promoting student engagement in the

process of learning the concepts of Scrum

methodology, widely used to manage software

development projects around the world. The game

addresses the process of managing the scope defined

for the project, aiming to deliver a product with

quality, within the pre-established schedule.

4.2.2 Methodology

Behind only software, methodologies were the most

used approaches to support project management.

Table 2 presents the studies that focus on this type of

approach.

Table 2: Studies that present a “Methodology” approach.

Studies that present a “Methodology” approach

[PS04], [PS09], [PS12], [PS13], [PS17], [PS20], [PS28],

[PS37], [PS39], [PS47], [PS53], [PS54]

Castillo-Barrera et al. (2018) [PS13] state that

before starting the execution of the project, it is

necessary to have previously carried out an analysis

and also a synthesis of the information that permeates

it. To this end, the authors present BloomSoft, a

methodology adapted from Bloom's Taxonomy and

used in conjunction with Scrum, which aims to

support teams in planning the construction,

integration and testing of the software that will be

developed in the project. Not only that, as the authors

also emphasize that the methodology makes it

possible to have an agile way of classifying the

complexity of user stories based on the verbs

identified in them and, concomitantly, to determine

from this classification the stage of Software

Development to which it belongs. Thus, the

development team has the possibility to classify the

stories in stages and, with that, make a better planning

for each Sprint.

Bierwolf et al. (2017) [PS09] report the use of

DevOps methodology in software project

management. DevOps aims to mitigate risks, in

particular to achieve a stable, secure and reliable

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production environment. Through this form of

communication and collaboration, all stakeholders

manage any uncertainties that arise, for example, due

to changes in technology or any changes in the

environment. The work also performs a comparison

between the results of using traditional approaches in

relation to DevOps approaches. The comparison is

mainly related to aspects such as control and

mitigation of uncertainties and risks.

There is also a methodology that varies from

Scrum and is presented by Baptista (2008) [PS04].

uScrum, the methodology described in the

aforementioned study, manages uncertainty and the

unknown, allowing the team involved in the project

to react quickly to changes in the most diverse

conditions. uScrum allows the team to effectively

prioritize regular work alongside the more difficult

creative work. The methodology prioritizes tasks in

monthly iterations based on their importance, urgency

and timeliness and, like Scrum, they are also called

sprints.

4.2.3 Method

Another type of approach that stands out are methods,

as this type of approach was identified in 11 of the 65

selected studies and, together with models, is the third

most used to support software project management.

Table 3 presents the studies that deal with methods.

Table 3: Studies that present a “Method” approach.

Studies that present a “Method” approach

[PS03], [PS05], [PS08], [PS11], [PS15], [PS23], [PS26],

[PS31], [PS50], [PS56], [PS64]

Haugen (2006) [PS26] describes the use of

Planning Poker. The aim of the study is to examine

whether introducing the planning poker process into

user story estimation improves estimation

performance compared to unstructured group

estimation. In this process, the customer first explains

each user story to the developer group. Developers

then discuss the work involved in implementation to

the point where everyone feels they have enough

information to estimate the effort required. All

developers then estimate the user story independently

and reveal their estimates simultaneously. Next, the

developers with the lowest and highest estimates

justify their estimates, and the group continues the

discussion to decide on a collective estimate, possibly

conducting one or more additional rounds of

individual estimates.

Zhang et al. (2016) [PS64] address in their study

on Early Software Size Estimation (ESSE), a method

that can extract semantic features from natural

language requirements automatically and build size

estimation models for the project. ESSE performs a

semantic analysis of requirements specification

documents by extracting information and

disseminating activation. Then, characteristics related

to complexity are extracted from the semantic

analysis results. In addition, ESSE extracts local

resources and global resources to do word-level

semantic analysis. Then, using these features, size

drivers and actual sizes from historical project data,

the size estimation model can be established by

regression algorithms. Finally, ESSE can estimate the

size of a new project using this size estimation model.

The other studies that use some software project

management methods are concerned with managing

quality [PS05, PS50], schedule [PS11], resources

[PS31, PS56], scope [PS03] and project risks [PS23].

In addition, these same studies are focused on the

following project phases: planning [PS11, PS23,

PS31], execution [PS50] and monitoring and control

[PS03, PS05, PS23, PS31, PS56].

4.2.4 Model

As well as the methods, it was possible to identify,

through the selected studies, 11 models that aim to

support the software projects management in agile

context. Table 4 presents the studies that focus on this

type of approach.

Table 4: Studies that present a “Model” approach.

Studies that present a “Model” approach

[PS22], [PS25], [PS27], [PS29], [PS34], [PS36], [PS46],

[PS48], [PS55], [PS58], [PS59]

Godoy et al. (2019) [PS22] present a new software

development tool based on agile methodologies

Scrum and Kanban and adapted to the current trend

of the global software environment. The Blueprint

model proposes lightweight project management that

is combined with a team organization to encourage

and facilitate communication between teams in

different locations. Blueprint introduces important

adaptations to Scrum and Kanban to reduce unwanted

bureaucracy and to facilitate global software

development.

Perkusich et al. (2013) [PS48] developed a

Probabilistic Model with Baysian Network. As the

name suggests, the model is a Bayesian network that

represents a software development project managed

in essence with the Scrum methodology. Scrum

Masters should use it to identify project issues and

guide the team to improve the project's chances of

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success. The model produces data with probability

values that represent the current status of key project

factors. It should be used to identify problems and

prioritize areas for improvement. The prioritization of

areas for improvement should be a collaborative

activity and the model should only be used as a source

of information to guide the discussion.

The remaining studies that deal with some model

focus on project schedule management [PS34, PS36,

PS58]. In addition to the aforementioned studies,

there are those focused on risk management [PS27,

PS46], communication [PS25], scope [PS29],

stakeholders [PS55] and quality [PS59]. These same

studies still focus on different phases of the project,

such as: planning [PS25, PS46, PS58, PS59],

execution [PS36, PS55] and monitoring and control

[PS27, PS29].

4.2.5 Tool

Based on the selected studies, five tools were

identified that support the software projects

management. Table 5 presents these studies.

Table 5: Studies that present a “Tool” approach.

Studies that present a “Tool” approach

[PS18], [PS38], [PS42], [PS49], [PS63]

Vivian et al. (2015) [PS63] expose in their study

a Panel to View Online Teamwork Discussions. The

tool is a dashboard that extracts and communicates

the distribution of team roles and members' emotional

information in real time. The panel is composed of a

series of elements: team participation and distribution

of roles, team and individual sentiment analysis and

team and individual emotions. It provides real-time

analysis of teamwork discussions and visualizes team

members' emotions, the roles they have taken, and the

overall team sentiment during the course of a

collaborative project.

Mateescu et al. (2015) [PS42] present a tool called

aWall. It is an agile team collaboration tool for large

multi-touch wall systems. aWall was designed based

on empirical user research using new concepts of

interaction and visualization to support and promote

the highly collaborative and communicative agile

work style. The tool is based on web technology and

can be used both in co-located and distributed

environments. According to the study authors, the

tool can be crucial for agile teams, since the agile

process depends on intense interaction, collaboration

and constant open communication between team

members. The remaining studies that deal with tools

turned their attention to the monitoring and control of

the project schedule, and to the planning of the scope.

Fehlmann and Kranich (2017) [PS18], for example,

through a Bayesian Approach Burn-up Chart, were

able to provide estimates of how much additional

time is needed to complete the planned work.

4.2.6 Technique

Following what was verified regarding the tools, from

the selected studies, five techniques were also

identified that aim to support the software projects

management, as shown in Table 6

Table 6: Studies that present a “Technical” approach.

Studies that present a “Technique” approach

[PS33], [PS35], [PS41], [PS51], [PS60]

Stapel et al. (2011) [PS60] present Flow Mapping,

a technique of the FLOW Method to plan and guide

communication in distributed development projects.

To achieve these goals, the technique is centered on

the visualization of a FLOW map. A FLOW map is a

special FLOW model (i.e. visualization of project

participants, documents and information flows)

extended by features to improve awareness in

distributed teams. According to the authors, when

using the Flow Mapping approach, the

communication of a distributed project can be

planned in a working day.

Kroll et al. (2017) [PS35] used a Genetic

Algorithm-Based Assignment technique. The

technique was used to assign tasks in a global

software development (GSD) project. The technique

uses a queue-based GSD simulator to evaluate the

fitness function. Results based on a multiple case

study (applying the technique to data from three real-

world projects) show that the approach could be

better than project managers' task assignments.

4.2.7 Framework

Four studies present some framework that supports

the software projects management in agile context, as

can be seen in Table 7.

Table 7: Studies that present a “Framework” approach.

Studies that present a “Framework” approach

[PS19], [PS24], [PS32], [PS45]

Silva and Oliveira (2016) [PS19] developed an

Agile Project Portfolio Management Framework. The

framework refers to a flexible approach to portfolio

management, suggesting faster and more dynamic

meetings, focusing mainly on the interaction and

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commitment of those involved in the process. Some

agile practices that can be used in each activity of this

framework are: planning portfolio management,

identifying new proposals, analyzing candidate

projects, composing the project portfolio and

monitoring portfolio.

Guerrero et al. (2019) [PS24] present Eagle, a

framework that supports a systematic way to define,

measure and visualize the practices of members of

software development teams following agile

principles. Specifically, the framework provides

microservices architecture based on the “Governify”

ecosystem for managing accordingly. The framework

provides an ecosystem of tools for organizations to

define their best practices to follow and track the

adherence of their teams and members in order to

learn about their pitfalls and improve the project over

time.

Jain and Suman (2018) [PS32] expose in their

study on a project management framework for global

software development (GSD). The GSD Project

Management Framework, as the authors call the

approach, assimilates the knowledge areas of the

PMBOK with the knowledge areas necessary for an

effective management of the GSD. It would guide the

project manager on aspects to consider when

executing distributed projects. The presented

framework covers feasibility and risk management,

virtual team management, knowledge management,

scope and resource management, performance

management and GSD integration management.

4.2.8 Practice

As shown in Figure 4, practices were the least

identified types of approaches in the selected studies,

with a total of two studies that only address some of

them, as shown in Table 8.

Table 8: Studies that present a “Practice” approach.

Studies that present a “Practice” approach

[PS57], [PS65]

Schreiber et al. (2017) [PS57] discuss a practice

called Metrics Driven Research Collaboration

(MEDIATION). The practice aims to ensure that all

project participants have an ongoing common

objective: the success of the project. As per

established practice, the project team should focus on

the most important requirements and continually

verify that the software product conforms to the

defined scope and corresponding metrics. The

practice further establishes that the status, challenges

and progress of the project be transparent to all team

members at all times.

Zhang et al. (2020) [PS65] implemented a practice

called Fireteam, a practice that focuses on small

teams in the software industry. Fireteam is nothing

more than a teamwork style. The practice defines two

to five members to handle the division of labor and

coordination issues in traditional development teams.

Briefly, the practice aims to reduce project

management overheads and improve productivity,

through the institutionalization of the practice of

small teams throughout the organization, to solve

problems arising from human and social aspects, such

as friendship, talent, skill and communications.

4.3 Strengths and Limitations of Ap-

proaches

This section gives an overview of the main

advantages and disadvantages / limitations of the

approaches identified from the selected studies.

4.3.1 Strengths

When a researcher / developer proposes to develop a

certain approach, he is looking for some means that

help him to break specific barriers of the context in

which he is inserted. Regarding the approaches that

aim to support the software projects management,

identified from the selected studies, it is no different.

They all have some advantages and even though they

are, in some cases, different from each other, at the

end of the day they all have the same objective: to

efficiently support software development teams.

Some approaches, despite being virtual, try to be

as close as possible to the real world [PS38], as with

the tool developed by Liskin and Schneider (2012)

[PS38]. Likewise, the approaches identified always

try to reduce the effort required by the team to

complete a project task [PS34, PS56, PS58, PS59].

These approaches are considered robust enough to

identify problems in the project and correct them in

time, avoiding further damage to resources, schedule

and, consequently, to the project [PS48].

Also noteworthy are those approaches that

provide great ease in terms of planning

communications, as is the case of Flow Mapping

presented by Stapel et al. (2011) [PS60] that allows

communication planning in up to one day. In

addition, it has an approach that allows the reduction

of Sprint time, when working with Scrum, without the

project losing quality, even if the reduction is

minimal, as reported by Alhazmi and Huang (2018)

[PS01], and Kroll et al. (2017) [PS35].

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145

4.3.2 Limitations

One of the points to take into account when we are

talking about any type of approach, whatever the

purpose it was developed for, are its limitations (now

called disadvantages). Limitations are inherent to any

work, especially when it comes to team-focused

approaches. Regarding software project management

approaches, there are a number of limitations

identified in some selected studies and that end up

extending to the others.

Initially, it was possible to observe that there is an

approach that focuses, among other things, on the

constant repair of the project and the work products

generated by it. However, the act of constantly fixing

defects can bring additional efforts to developers, as

reported by Tang (2008) [PS34]. There are also

approaches that rely entirely on solid and equal

commitment from all team members. If the team is

not 100% focused and committed, the project

naturally tends to fail [PS12, PS28, PS47, PS54], as

less engaged employees could perform activities

inappropriately, even with the help of the approach,

as Godoy et al. (2019) [PS22].

Some approaches are not so recommended for

planning a small number of tasks, as they were

developed to deal with large volumes of data, as with

the Sprint Planning Decision Support System

(SPESS), developed by Alhazmi and Huang (2018)

[PS01]. Other approaches do not constantly monitor

the project and this limits the team's view of the

progress of what is being developed, as Stapel et al.

(2011) [PS60].

With regard specifically to software, many

plugins that are developed to compose them end up

falling into disuse quickly, as is the case of plugins

developed for Redmine, reported in the study by

Dowling and McGrath (2015) [PS16]. For the

authors, while there is an active community of

developers working on Redmine and creating

valuable plugins, this is something of a double-edged

sword. That's because, plugins are not always

compatible with the latest versions, causing

headaches during the update and failures in

functionality of features that teams previously used.

4.4 Evaluating Approaches

This section presents the main ways used by the

authors of the selected studies to evaluate and validate

their approaches.

The way most used by the authors of the works to

evaluate their approaches was the case study, with a

total of 55 studies that used this method. Trapa and

Rao (2006) [PS61], for example, applied their

approach to a project called Cronos, where user

stories were divided into tasks and inserted into the

software. Each task was assigned to two developers

who were responsible for assigning the time estimate

for each task they were responsible for. After that,

reports were generated with information about the

project completion time and the impacts of the

additions of new functionalities that came to exist.

Some studies used questionnaires to obtain

feedback on the approach developed, five studies

more precisely. Bastarrica et al. (2017) [PS05]

formulated two research questions to identify the

advantages and disadvantages of using their

approach. Data collection involved a structured

questionnaire that was made available to the CEOs

and a technical professional from each company. The

purpose of the questionnaire was to capture actual and

desired practices in relation to project management.

Regarding observational assessments, a total of

three studies used this assessment method. We can

highlight the study by Mateescu et al. (2015) [PS42]

who, from the observation of the use of the proposed

approach, were able to identify positive points and

points for improvement, as well as conclusions about

how efficient the proposed approach can be in a

project. The authors verified that aWall takes

advantage of the resolution of web technology and

thereby surpasses the possibilities of existing desktop

tools. They noted that each agile meeting has its main

task and specific objective, but also needs various

supporting information and artifacts.

Finally, two studies conducted internal

evaluations, that is, the developers of the approaches

themselves evaluated them based on their own

metrics, without necessarily having made the

approaches available to third parties. Bruegge et al.

(2009) [PS11] evaluated the feasibility and

performance of their approach from two classification

experiments. The first experiment classified the tasks

according to the activity to which they belonged. In

the second experiment, the approach was employed

to classify the status of tasks, that is, the machine

learning engine predicts whether these tasks have

already been completed or not.

5 DISCUSSION

This section presents our main conclusions and

impressions of the results presented in Section 4.

The first item to note refers to the results on which

areas and phases of project management the

approaches emphasize. As illustrated in Figure 2, the

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146

areas of schedule, quality and communication are the

areas that received the most attention from the

authors. Something similar can be observed in

(Carvalho et al., 2020). The authors identified,

through an opinion survey with software project

managers, that the areas of schedule and

communication are the two areas that these

professionals are most concerned about.

Specifically on the schedule, the area most

emphasized in the studies, it was possible to observe

that the focus in this area is given by the fact that

estimating the time and the project schedule are

crucial tasks and extremely influence the project

results (Zhang and Jin, 2020). Regarding the phases,

it was observed that the authors give greater emphasis

to project planning. That is because planning is

crucial to the success of a project. Tasks need to be

allocated to team members, taking into account task

precedence, balancing the workload of team

members, and ensuring quality (Lin et al., 2014).

Regarding the type of approach, it was possible to

verify that software is the most commonly used type

of approach to support the software projects

management. Results like this can be considered

common, considering that currently several systems

that automate processes are becoming more and more

commonplace. Such systems facilitate the work of

people in different fields of application (Uspenskiy et

al., 2019). Shaikh et al. (2018) also state that project

management software is widely used because it

includes several useful features that facilitate the

work of the team, especially the project manager,

features such as task management, real-time

monitoring, chatbox, notifications and alerts.

In addition to software, project management

methodologies also stood out. During the analysis of

the selected studies, it was possible to identify 12

studies that deal with this type of approach. Among

these methodologies, one that stands out is Scrum.

This methodology was used directly in four studies

[PS12, PS28, PS47, PS54] and indirectly, through

adaptations, in two studies [PS04, PS07]. One of the

reasons for this is that Scrum teams are the most

important factors in improving the performance of a

project's success. Like any agile development

method, Scrum follows a collaborative and guided

approach to software development, reflecting the

principles of the Agile Manifesto (Michael et al.,

2021).

Something that caught our attention when

analyzing the studies was how the approaches focus

on team commitment and engagement. However, as

reported in Subection 4.3.2, some approaches impose

a process of constant communication and interaction,

using these items as a way of evaluating the

performance of team members. However, care must

be taken with this particular issue, as there are

approaches that can give the false impression that a

collaborator is not helping or not engaged in the

project. This is because this type of approach is based

on and draws its conclusions from constant

interactions. However, not always someone who

helps in the project interacts as often, but can

contribute with more technical information [PS63].

Still on the limitations, it was found that some

approaches are not recommended to plan a small

number of tasks, as they were developed to deal with

large volumes of data. In this case, the ideal is for the

organization to invest in tools that constantly monitor

it, especially when dealing with a large-scale project

[PS01].

Regarding the evaluations of the approaches

conducted by the authors, it was possible to notice a

considerable rate of studies that used the case study

as a form of evaluation, a rate that corresponds to 86%

of the analyzed studies. This rate allows us to verify

that this type of evaluation manages to generate more

satisfactory and more reliable results, as the approach

is submitted to a real environment and from its use,

data are extracted that allow the planning and conduct

of improvements, in addition to the reduction of

possible limitations that the approach may present.

Based on the results listed and described in this

paper, it is possible to state that, although there was a

drop in the number of studies in the years 2020 and

2021 (the latter year justified by being the year of

conducting this SLR), there is an interest in part of

academia and industry to develop research aimed at

managing software projects, especially research that

focuses on approaches that aim to facilitate this

process.

6 THREATS TO VALIDITY

This section discusses potential threats to the validity

of this study and actions taken to address validity

issues. We used the structure proposed by Wohlin et

al. (2000).

6.1 Construct Validity

To minimize the risk that the SLR would not bring the

studies that answered the research questions, a test

was carried out with the search string. Four studies

that proved to meet the research objectives were

manually selected and then it was verified if, when

The Diversity of Approaches to Support Software Project Management in the Agile Context: Trends, Comparisons and Gaps

147

running the string in the bases, these same studies

would return, which in fact happened.

6.2 Internal Validity

During the extraction process, studies were ranked

based on our judgment. Studies that depend on the

judgment of the authors can carry with them a bias

that needs to be mitigated as much as possible. With

that in mind, throughout the study analysis process,

weekly meetings were held to discuss and reach a

consensus on which studies should really be selected.

6.3 External Validity

It is possible that SLR does not return all relevant

studies on approaches that support software project

management. To mitigate this risk, we identified and

relied on studies similar to this one so that it was not

started from scratch.

6.4 Conclusion Validity

To ensure the conclusion validity of our study, we

present throughout Section 4 charts and tables

exposing the results generated directly from the data

and we discuss the observations and explicit trends.

This ensures a high degree of traceability between

data and conclusions. In addition, our corpus of

studies is available to other researchers. Furthermore,

the SLR process was carried out with the support of a

PhD professor who has extensive experience in

studies of this genre, with several publications in

software engineering.

7 RELATED WORKS

This section presents similar studies that are directly

or indirectly related to the investigation of the present

study. Despite all efforts, we did not find secondary

studies that searched the literature on approaches to

support software project management in agile

context. However, there are secondary studies that

explore other aspects of software project

management.

Couto et al. (2021) conducted research consisting

of a systematic literature mapping (SLM) and a

survey, with the objective of identifying visualization

approaches that could help in the software projects

management. As a result, the authors identified 16

visualization approaches that meet the research

objectives. Finally, based on the identified

approaches, the authors proposed an extension of the

PMBOK, adding two more processes, namely: "Plan

Data Visualization" and "Implement Data

Visualization".

El Bajta et al. (2018) performed an MSL to

identify and classify studies on software project

management approaches in the context of global

software development. The authors identified, from

the analysis of 84 articles, the strengths and

weaknesses of each approach and analyzed their

applications in the industry. The results obtained in

the work indicate that the interest in software project

management for the GSD has increased since 2006. It

was also found that the most frequently reported

methods (40%) are those used for coordination,

planning and monitoring, together with with time and

cost estimation techniques.

As can be seen in the studies described above,

they are not focused on the same context, nor on the

same objective of this SLR. However, we believe that

they serve as a basis for our work as they focus on

software project management or part of it, as is the

case of Vieira et al. (2020) that focus only on project

risk management. Therefore, this work is unique in

that it explicitly deals with software project

management approaches in agile context, focusing

not only on one type of approach and not only on an

area or phase of the project, but covering it as a whole.

8 CONCLUSION

This study described an SLR to identify approaches

that support the software projects management in

agile context. We selected 65 primary studies, from

2004 to 2021. Of these, 22 studies address approaches

focused on project schedule management and 36

studies are focused on the planning phase.

We observed that software is the most common

approach among all the others, being identified in a

total of 15 studies, followed by the methodologies

that appear in 12 studies. We found some positive

points related to the use of these approaches, such as:

reducing the effort required by the team, provide

greater ease in terms of communications planning and

reduce Sprint time when working with Scrum. In

addition, we identified some negative points, as we

can highlight: there are approaches that fully depend

on an equal commitment of all team members and

there are approaches that require many tasks in the

initial phase of the project.

From the results, it was possible to verify how

important and how project management approaches

are for the development of software with more

quality, in addition to being able to see some

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148

limitations that still need to be mitigated, which

therefore gives opportunities to researchers in the area

to develop further in the area. In this line, we plan as

future works to apply a survey to software project

managers who work in industry and / or academia to

verify if what is being presented in the literature is

being used in organizations and, finally, apply

Grounded Theory to build one or more theories about

the main advantages and disadvantages of using the

approaches identified in the survey.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The authors would like to thank the Coordination for

the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel

(CAPES) in Brazil for the financial support for the

granting of a scholarship for a master's degree.

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