What do we know about software product management? - a systematic mapping study

Software product management (SPM) offers tools and practices for achieving business goals of a company as well as for increasing the predictability and profitability of software product development. Despite the importance of this topic, the studies of SPM have this far been fragmented. The goal of the present study is to summarize the existing knowledge in software product management and identify the areas which need further research. The paper reports the conduct and the results of a systematic mapping study which identified 25 studies on SPM. Still, most of the papers had only hypotheses and theories that were not empirically confirmed or the confirmation was based on a small set of cases. The existing knowledge of software product management consists of small and unconnected pieces. In addition to this, our specific interest, software product management in the cloud environment has not been studied at all. However, since both researchers and practitioners find research in SPM important, this area needs more research in the future.