Software development methods are usually not applied by the book. Companies are under pressure to continuously deploy software products that meet market needs and stakeholders’ requests. To implement efficient and effective development approaches, companies utilize multiple frameworks, methods and practices, and combine these into hybrid development approaches. A common combination contains a comprehensive management framework to organize and steer projects, as well as a number of small-scale practices providing the development teams with tools to complete their tasks. In this paper, we study software development approaches that have been implemented in practice. Through an international survey, 732 answers related to projects and/or products have been collected. Our results show that three of four companies implement hybrid development approaches. Yet, company size as well as company strategy in devising and evolving hybrid development approaches affect the suitability of the chosen development approach to reach company goals.
