Beyond Code, We Are People: A Systematic Mapping of 25 Years of Literature on Soft Skills in Agile Development Teams

TL;DR

This paper systematically maps 25 years of research on soft skills in agile software development, highlighting key competencies, roles, and gaps to inform better integration of human factors.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of soft skills in agile teams over 25 years, identifying key competencies, common approaches, and research gaps.

Findings

Communication, adaptability, teamwork, and leadership are recurring soft skills.

Scrum is the most adopted agile approach in the literature.

There is a lack of studies on role-specific soft skills.

Abstract

Software development is a sociotechnical and human-centered endeavor in which human factors directly influence quality, productivity, and innovation capacity. In this context, career development in computing goes beyond technical mastery, requiring competencies that enable professionals to deal with continuous change and collaborative demands. Among these, non-technical skills (soft skills) stand out, encompassing social, emotional, and communicational dimensions essential to team effectiveness and the success of software projects. Despite their recognized importance, there is still a need for a systematic mapping of the most relevant soft skills over the past 25 years, a period marked by the adoption of agile approaches in industry. This gap limits the integration of human and technical aspects in software development. This study presents a systematic mapping of the literature, analyzing 97 studies published between January 2000 and May 2025 across major scientific databases. The results identify recurring competencies such as communication, adaptability, teamwork, and leadership, as well as their association with different roles in agile contexts. The main agile approaches adopted, particularly Scrum, are also identified, along with key gaps in the literature, such as the lack of studies on role specific soft skills. The findings can support researchers, educators, and practitioners in designing curricula, training strategies, and organizational practices aligned with human factors, reinforcing the importance of integrating social and technical dimensions in the development of collaborative and innovative professionals.