Grupo Alarcos · Journal article · 2026

The Impact of Hybrid Work Challenges on Software Engineers and Strategies to Mitigate Them

Aurora Vizcaíno Barceló, Rodríguez, J.

Journal of Software Evolution and Process · 2026 · Q4

ABSTRACT One of the effects of COVID‐19 was that software engineers were forced to work remotely, in many cases without prior experience, which may have led to a number of challenges for projects and organizations, along with developers' well‐being. Several work styles were considered after the pandemic, because not only did teleworking persist but new forms of work emerged, for which neither organizations nor employees were prepared. These new modalities have led to challenges that have not yet been sufficiently addressed in the existing literature, mainly because they are relatively recent phenomena. The aim of this paper is to analyze the risks that remote or hybrid working can pose to software development and examine them from the perspective of the company, the project itself, and employees. Once the problems have been identified, it is important to analyze them from the point of view of a software engineer's personality and assess the likelihood of these challenges arising according to the working model used. It is also essential to find strategies with which to mitigate these challenges. These are the objectives of this paper, which aims to help project managers and developers carry out hybrid or remote software development efficiently and ensure their employees' well‐being. To achieve these objectives, a mixed‐methods approach comprising five stages was adopted: a systematic mapping review to identify and categorize the factors affecting software engineers, a survey of 184 practitioners to validate and refine these factors, a second survey examining the perceived impact of different work modalities on productivity and associated risks, and an evaluation of our framework (main contribution of this paper) through semi‐structured interviews with 10 practitioners.