Agile methodology has existed for over a decade – its potential benefits have made it attractive and popular. As part of innovation, public organisations increasingly invest in information technology systems. Nevertheless, complex information technology adaptive systems require adaptability and flexibility to improve public organisations' delivery systems. Even though the Agile methodology can increase productivity and quality, adopting agile scrum methodology in public organisations is challenging. This study investigates public organisations where IT projects have unclear requirements and cross-functional team environments – which the scrum methodology is typically best suited for. However, despite the widely spread agile method concept and the need increased in the last two decades, still public organisations are not fully adapted to agile scrum methodology, and researchers have noticed slow and ineffective changes in adopting it. While many studies are available on challenges in adopting agile scrum methodology in public organisations' IT project management, there is a lack of comprehensive understanding of these challenges. Therefore, challenges in adopting Agile scrum methodology in public organisations' IT project management context were studied in this literature review. This study aims to report on a systematic literature review about adopting agile scrum methodology in public organisations' IT project management and provide empirical evidence about its current situation and challenges. This research has used a systematic literature review as a research strategy and thematic analysis to analyse the secondary data, where the analysis is conducted based on the filtered themes, sub-themes and codes. The systematic literature review uses the preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) framework; inclusion and exclusion criteria systematically assess the quality of chosen papers and either include or exclude them for this research. Most relevant studies for final inclusion were selected, screened, and shortlisted based on the keywords from academic databases and other online resources to investigate and analyse the research question. The implementation of the agile scrum methodology in IT project management can present notable challenges for public organisations. A number of sources have identified these challenges, and a thorough examination of the matter reveals their frequency.