VersionOne Software, an Atlanta-based provider of enterprise project and lifecycle management solutions for agile development, this autumn conducted a global survey to highlight the value teams deliver using Agile software development. The result is their "State of Agile Development" Survey Results, co-sponsored by The Agile Alliance. The survey indicates that the key reasons people are adopting Agile are: managing changing requirements and priorities, and accelerating time-to-market.
Survey respondents come from companies of all sizes, from small and mid-sized organizations to the largest global corporations, and from every industry vertical, from financial services, health care, and education to video games, government, and defense.
However, when compared with Scott Ambler's survey on Agile Practice earlier this year, the results seem to point out the difficulty of accurately capturing the general state of Agile "in the wild". For example, these two surveys seem to contradict one another regarding adoption rates of XP and Scrum methodologies, though insufficient information is given to allow a strict comparison:
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None the less, many agree that adoption of these methods in general is on the increase, and not just in number of instances of adoption but also in terms of scale. VersionOne CEO Robert Holler, in a podcast interview with Agile Journal said,
Survey respondents come from companies of all sizes, from small and mid-sized organizations to the largest global corporations, and from every industry vertical, from financial services, health care, and education to video games, government, and defense.
However, when compared with Scott Ambler's survey on Agile Practice earlier this year, the results seem to point out the difficulty of accurately capturing the general state of Agile "in the wild". For example, these two surveys seem to contradict one another regarding adoption rates of XP and Scrum methodologies, though insufficient information is given to allow a strict comparison:
From Scott Ambler's "State of Agile Practice" Survey
None the less, many agree that adoption of these methods in general is on the increase, and not just in number of instances of adoption but also in terms of scale. VersionOne CEO Robert Holler, in a podcast interview with Agile Journal said,
"[the responses to similar questions] 2 or 3 years ago would primarily would have been from small teams - we've seen an uptake in the size of teams adopting or considering adopting Agile... roughly a third of responses were from organizations of 250 or more. [size of software organization]."Holler suspects that we're not yet nearing the end of this increase in adoption:
I think any time you're talking about a fundamental change in the way people do business, we're talking at least a double-digit time frame, at least ten years. ...maybe five years ago it was primarily developer-led, and then two or three years ago, team-led, now we're seeing a lot of management- and project-management-led, and I think the future is going to be executive-led.In fact, this survey seems to show that, in contrast to the early years of the Agile movement, Agile methods are now almost as likely to be championed by a member of senior management as by grass roots leaders like team leads and architects:
What role most closely identifies the initial champion of Agile development within your organization?The full results of the survey are available online, as well as in a .pdf download, on the VersionOne site.
28% VP / Director of Development 18% Project Manager 13% Team Lead 11% President / CEO 7% Architect 5% CIO 5% Consultant