Documentation Practices in Agile Software Development: A Systematic Literature Review

TL;DR

This systematic review analyzes agile documentation practices, identifying key factors, tools, and challenges, highlighting the need for better synchronization of documentation tools in agile development.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive synthesis of agile documentation practices, tools, and challenges based on 74 studies, and highlights gaps in tool integration.

Findings

Nine key factors influence agile documentation.

Current tools focus on different challenges separately.

There is a lack of synchronization among documentation tools.

Abstract

Context: Agile development methodologies in the software industry have increased significantly over the past decade. Although one of the main aspects of agile software development (ASD) is less documentation, there have always been conflicting opinions about what to document in ASD. Objective: This study aims to systematically identify what to document in ASD, which documentation tools and methods are in use, and how those tools can overcome documentation challenges. Method: We performed a systematic literature review of the studies published between 2010 and June 2021 that discusses agile documentation. Then, we systematically selected a pool of 74 studies using particular inclusion and exclusion criteria. After that, we conducted a quantitative and qualitative analysis using the data extracted from these studies. Results: We found nine primary vital factors to add to agile documentation from our pool of studies. Our analysis shows that agile practitioners have primarily developed their documentation tools and methods focusing on these factors. The results suggest that the tools and techniques in agile documentation are not in sync, and they separately solve different challenges. Conclusions: Based on our results and discussion, researchers and practitioners will better understand how current agile documentation tools and practices perform. In addition, investigation of the synchronization of these tools will be helpful in future research and development.