The Sars-Cov-2 Pandemic and Agile Methodologies in Software Development: A Multiple Case Study in Germany

In recent years, agile methodologies have been established in software development. Today, many companies use agile or hybrid approaches in software development projects. The Sars-Cov-2 pandemic has led to a paradigm shift in the way people work in Germany. While it was customary for German software development teams to work co-located before the pandemic, teams have been working on a distributed remote basis since March 2020. Studies show that distributed work impacts the performance of agile software development teams. To examine the effects of the Sars-Cov-2 pandemic on agile software development in Germany, we planned, carried out, and evaluated a multiple case study with three cases. The results show that the majority of teams did not experience any loss in performance. We present some problems and challenges and derive specific suggestions for software development practice from the results of the study.