Systematic Literature Reviews in Distributed Software Development: A Tertiary Study

Distributed Software Development (DSD) emerged from the need to achieve geographically distant customers and currently, allows organizations have global customers and other benefits. This scenario has given rise to new Software Engineering challenges resulting from DSD particularities. Several Systematic Reviews were conducted to address these new challenges. The objective of this paper is to categorize systematic reviews conducted in DSD context. We used the systematic review method to identify SLRs (Systematic Literature Reviews) that address DSD aspects. This study is categorized as a tertiary review. Of fourteen SLRs, seven address aspects of managing distributed development. Four SLRs addressed topics of engineering process. The three remaining are related to Requirements, Design and Software Engineering Education in DSD. The topic areas covered by SLRs are limited, where the majority are focused on summarize the current knowledge concerning a research question. Despite the number of SLRs, the amount of empirical studies is relatively small.