Large project overruns and overtime work have been reported in the software industry, resulting in additional expense for companies and personal issues for developers. The present work aims to provide an overview of studies related to time pressure in software engineering; specifically, existing definitions, possible causes, and metrics relevant to time pressure were collected, and a mapping of the studies to software processes and approaches was performed. Moreover, we synthesize results of existing quantitative studies on the effects of time pressure on software development, and offer practical takeaways for practitioners and researchers, based on empirical evidence. Our search strategy examined 5,414 sources, found through repository searches and snowballing. Applying inclusion and exclusion criteria resulted in the selection of 102 papers, which made relevant contributions related to time pressure in software engineering. The majority of high quality studies report increased productivity and decreased quality under time pressure. Frequent categories of studies focus on quality assurance, cost estimation, and process simulation. It appears that time pressure is usually caused by errors in cost estimation. The effect of time pressure is most often identified during software quality assurance. The majority of empirical studies report increased productivity under time pressure, while the most cost estimation and process simulation models assume that compressing the schedule increases the total needed hours. We also find evidence of the mediating effect of knowledge on the effects of time pressure, and that tight deadlines impact tasks with an algorithmic nature more severely. Future research should better contextualize quantitative studies to account for the existing conflicting results and to provide an understanding of situations when time pressure is either beneficial or harmful.

中文翻译：

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软件工程中的时间压力：系统回顾

软件行业已经报告了大型项目超支和加班，导致公司的额外费用和开发人员的个人问题。目前的工作旨在概述与软件工程中的时间压力相关的研究；具体来说，收集了与时间压力相关的现有定义、可能的原因和指标，并将研究映射到软件过程​​和方法。此外，我们综合了现有关于时间压力对软件开发的影响的定量研究的结果，并根据经验证据为从业者和研究人员提供了实用的结论。我们的搜索策略检查了 5,414 个来源，这些来源是通过存储库搜索和滚雪球找到的。应用纳入和排除标准导致选择了 102 篇论文，在软件工程的时间压力方面做出了相关贡献。大多数高质量研究报告说，在时间压力下，生产力提高了，质量降低了。常见的研究类别侧重于质量保证、成本估算和过程模拟。时间压力似乎通常是由成本估算错误引起的。时间压力的影响最常在软件质量保证期间确定。大多数实证研究报告在时间压力下提高了生产力，而大多数成本估算和过程模拟模型假设压缩进度会增加所需的总小时数。我们还发现了知识对时间压力影响的中介作用的证据，并且紧迫的期限对具有算法性质的任务的影响更为严重。