Socio-Technical Design, Organizational Structures, and Collaboration Dynamics in Software Development Organizations: A Qualitative Systematic Literature Review

Software development organizations are reshaping their structures in response to Agile transformation, DevOps adoption, and distributed collaboration, but empirical evidence on how organizational and socio-technical configurations jointly shape collaboration and delivery performance remains fragmented across disciplines. Although numerous studies have independently examined software engineering teams, Agile governance, and collaboration mechanisms, evidence regarding organizational and socio-technical dynamics remains fragmented across software engineering and information systems literature. This systematic literature review synthesized evidence concerning organizational structures and socio-technical factors influencing collaboration and coordination in software development organizations.
The review followed the PRISMA 2020 reporting framework and adopted the Kitchenham and Charters Guidelines for evidence-based software engineering systematic literature reviews. Using a predefined search string and PICOC framework, 353 studies were initially identified through database and registry searching procedures. Following filtering, eligibility screening, and quality assessment conducted independently by three reviewers, 21 high-quality studies published between 2022 and 2026 were retained for final synthesis.
The findings revealed that organizational structures significantly influence software engineering outcomes through governance mechanisms, team autonomy, architecture-team alignment, communication structures, and knowledge mobilization practices. Agile and DevOps-oriented structures demonstrated stronger coordination efficiency, communication flexibility, and software delivery effectiveness compared to rigid hierarchical structures. The review also identified major socio-technical factors affecting collaboration and coordination, including communication systems, psychological safety, organizational culture, human factors, distributed coordination mechanisms, and socio-technical alignment between technical systems and organizational workflows.
This qualitative systematic literature review integrates recent evidence on organizational structures and socio-technical factors that influence collaboration and coordination in software development organizations.

software engineering, socio-technical systems, Agile Development, DevOps

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