In planning the launch of the Agile Journal, CM Crossroads polled its subscribers on their attitudes towards Agile development and to see how the subscribers' values fit with the priorities for the upcoming journal. In February 2006, over 400 IT professionals representing 25 different industries responded to a short online survey. The results showed a very high level of interest in Agile processes and the recognition that responding to changing business requirements and delivering value are the key success factors for development organizations.

Before diving into specific Agile development questions, we first asked respondents to weigh in on the importance of several factors on the success of their development projects (see Figure 1).  

Over 80 percent of those responding felt that effectively addressing changing needs and delivering value are key determinants in their projects' success. This ties directly to the reasons that companies turn to Agile processes and the results that they achieve. By delivering frequent releases and emphasizing customer involvement, Agile project teams are able to address business requirements and quickly act on user feedback. And, by prioritizing the features that are delivered in each iteration, the team can directly front-load high value features - as defined by the customer- and thus achieve that time-to-value benefit.

Compliance has obviously had a huge impact on business management. Now, development organizations feel the impact and realize that compliance is a necessary component of project success. Companies that implement effective governance programs, balancing the need for agility against domestic and international compliance requirements, will do the best job of delivering high value software solutions.

Far fewer respondents felt that leveraging globally resources would affect project success to the same degree. In part, this is due to the fact {sidebar id=1} that global teams often equate to offshore solutions, and thus they are viewed as a threat rather than a solution for internal teams. However, we feel that the use of truly global teams - including both distributed internal staff and effective use of third-party sources - will be a major factor in delivering cost-effective and timely solutions.  

It's important to keep this survey data in context. Not all CM Crossroads members are experienced Agile developers, yet they still had a keen interest in using Agile processes (see Figure 2). Thirty-five percent of the 414 respondents have projects or pilots underway, and only 12 percent do not see a fit for Agile processes in their organizations. The fact that 88 percent of these organizations (one-third of which have over 10,000 employees) are using or evaluating Agile processes proves that Agile processes have truly hit the mainstream.

When asked about the factors driving their use of Agile processes, answers were fairly evenly distributed (see Figure 3). Time to market, quality, and cost effectiveness are common drivers for new process or technology adoption. However, it's refreshing to see developers stepping up and putting business alignment at the top of their lists - over one-third of these respondents recognizes the importance of business-driven development. ­

Of those people using or considering Agile processes (approximately 270 of our 414 respondents), there is no dominant process that they choose (see Figure 4). Scrum and XP have more visibility in the general marketplace, but use of Feature-driven Development (FDD) is on the rise. Those replying "other" clarified that they use RUP, hybrid approaches drawing on XP, Scrum and other techniques, and a variety of homegrown processes for iterative development.

The CM Crossroads community is clearly ready for Agile approaches to software development and project management. As these teams complete their initial projects and begin scaling their use Agile processes to the enterprise level, they'll need to address a broader set of issues including scalable architectures, using Agile processes on distributed teams.

One thing that we didn't ask about in this survey was metrics. How valuable are Agile processes? How do you know that they're paying off? We look forward to digging into this topic, and look forward to your feedback.

About the Author

Liz Barnett is the Editor in Chief of the Agile Journal and Principal Analyst at EZ Insight Inc. Previously Liz spent 10 years as a Vice President and Research Analyst at Forrester Research, joining Forrester as a result of its acquisition of Giga Information Group. Liz held management positions at Accenture, PepsiCo, and Atelier Research. She also was the Research Director for the advanced software development and advanced network computing research services at New Science Associates, prior to its acquisition by Gartner Group. Liz holds a patent for developing a distributed application development/CASE tool. Liz earned her B.S. in operations research and industrial engineering at Cornell University.

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