Agile change approach for collaborative software development contexts: A systematic literature review

Abstract

This systematic literature review examines how agile solutions can drive organizational change in collaborative open-source software (OSS) contexts. Motivated by persistent challenges in governance, alignment, contribution lifecycles, workflow, leadership, and measurement, the review asks which prescriptive and non-prescriptive agile approaches are being applied when organizations collaborate with OSS communities, and how these approaches mitigate those issues. The study first conducts an umbrella review (2000–2024) to confirm the gap and scope, then performs a main systematic review across digital libraries using inclusion, exclusion, and quality criteria. The synthesis maps findings to a conceptual framework of nine problem areas and two change paths. Results show a dominance of prescriptive methods, especially Scrum, LeSS, SAFe, and Kanban, for workflow trans-parency, dependency management, and coordination, while governance and leadership models remain under-explored. Building on this evidence, the paper proposes: (1) a prescriptive change approach for low-maturity organizations that integrates holacratic governance with Scrum/LeSS, Communities of Practice, Design Thinking for innovation, Management 3.0 leadership, and KPI-oriented cultures; and (2) a non-prescriptive approach for mature organizations based on unFIX’s fractal organizational design, forums and collaboration patterns, dele-gation levels, and outcome-focused metrics to extend co-evolution with communities. The dual pathway enables organizations to select and sequence interventions that align with their paradigm and maturity, thereby bridging organizational and community boundaries to foster sustained agility. The review highlights open research needs on governance mechanisms, leadership in symbiotic ecosystems, and empirical evaluations of combined scaling approaches beyond SAFe, as well as longitudinal studies on alignment, dependency management, and mea-surement cultures in high-variability OSS environments.