Determinants of Effective Change Management for Software Deployment Projects

Software application deployment change management is one of the emerging research themes that is gaining increased focus day by day. Our study examined the factors that affect software application deployment change management in Agile software development settings. Our study provided a systematic review and synthesized the approaches, practices, and challenges reported for adopting and implementing deployment change management. The prime objective of our study was to systematically synthesize the data extracted and formulate evidence-based practical recommendations that are influential in software deployment change management. Six research themes are proposed to evaluate the rationale of the research question. This qualitative study and systematic review explored the pertinent research articles and key findings from prominent academic databases. Based on the selected criteria, the final screening revealed 25 articles from an immense set of publications. Key findings that emerged from these publications are correlated with the six research themes: (a) timely communication with all stakeholders; (b) the reliance of deployment approaches on past experience; (c) the importance of collaboration among team members having adequate knowledge of DevOps tools; (d) the ramification of the differences among development, test, and production environments; (e) the influential areas that reap the benefits of continuous delivery and deployment; and (f) the challenges of the effective use of containerization. We also found indications of the significance of Lewin’s three-step change process model in the Agile development and deployment environment. Overall, our study deepens understanding of this thriving research area and contributes to the literature on Agile deployment and the software change management process.