This summer over 700 developers and managers responded to an Agile development survey conducted by VersionOne and sponsored by the Agile Alliance. The results are in with some very interesting results. Above all, this survey shows that Agile practices deliver on their promises and can deliver significant ROI across many types and sizes of organizations.

I'll start by saying that the intention of the survey was to determine how Agile processes are being implemented - not to determine the size or penetration of the Agile market. Thus, the survey participants do not represent average developers. The survey was distributed specifically to "Agile aware" or "Agile practicing" developers including VersionOne's customer base and newsletter list, most Agile Alliance members, readers of the Agile Journal, and some other technology sites such as theserverside.com.

On average, the 722 respondents have been practicing Agile development methods for 2.3 years, with their company's experience averaging 1.9 years. {sidebar id=1} Over one quarter of them work in companies with software development organizations of 250 or more people. Interestingly, while many of the respondents come from fairly large organizations, 82 percent of them work in teams of 10 or fewer. Scrum is the most widely used methodology and this is consistent with feedback I've received from development organizations. Scrum seems to be the most pragmatic first step for many teams: it hones in on overall team and scope management and doesn't wreak havoc on developers' styles and tools. That said, few companies stop at Scrum. Once they implement the broad Agile project structures, they quickly turn to Agile development practices like continuous integration, test-driven development and refactoring.[1]

Adopting Agile Processes
What drove these respondents to adopt Agile processes? Almost half cited the need to be responsive to changing priorities as the greatest driver (see Figure 1). Of course, improving productivity, quality, and time-to-market are always important - over 75% percent of respondents rated all of these drivers as either very important or of the highest importance.

Figure 1: Adoption Drivers

Early Agile adopters cited lack of management support as a key barrier to their success. Not so any more. This group found lack of personnel with Agile experience and general resistance to change to be the greatest challenges (see Figure 2). Also, these organizations did not fear lack of management control or lack of engineering discipline, other early Agile project challenges (see Figure 3). Concerns over lack of up-front planning and lack of documentation topped the list. Surprisingly, inability to scale resonated with only 10 percent of respondents. This number is likely to rise as teams increase their use of Agile processes across the enterprise. Scalability and support for distributed Agile teams will be the greatest challenge for teams implementing Agile processes on a global scale. 

 Figure 2: Barriers                                           

Figure 3: Concerns

In these companies, 11 percent had the President/CEO as the initial Agile champion, although close to one-third indicated that the VP or director of development was the key driver. As companies are able to demonstrate business value derived from Agile projects, CEO support will increase and IT management will not have to drive these initiatives.

Measuring Success
The industry must be able to demonstrate quantifiable benefits of Agile processes to convince more traditional organizations to make the change. Respondents to this survey have begun to estimate their successes and quantify the benefits they have achieved. Forty percent were able to significantly improve their ability to manage changing priorities (see Figure 4). Twenty percent noted significantly improved team morale - a huge factor for successful development teams and a factor that should be monitored along with cost management. But most of all, these teams have begun to quantify their results: 60 percent estimated that they've improved their time-to-market ability by over 25 percent (see Figure 5) and 55 percent have realized that same magnitude of improvement in quality and time-to-market.

Figure 4: Quantifying Results                       source: VersionOne survey

Figure 5: Specific Improvements                 source: VersionOne survey

The Agile community has reached an inflection point: mainstream companies are adopting Agile practices and teams have begun to quantify their results. Going forward, the greatest technical challenges Agile teams face revolve around complex and highly distributed projects. Expect the concerns listed in Figure 3 to change and focus on offshore Agile projects, large team (and sub-team) management, and fit with corporate governance programs. The greatest management challenges lie in the area of metrics and reporting - particularly communicating benefits to business value, not just technical efficiency.[2] As IT organizations implement these changes, Agile adoption will become a business decision and one that truly impacts the bottom line.

[1] This survey did not probe into the specific Agile practices that teams have adopted. Scott Ambler's March 2006 "Agile Adoption Rate Survey" did ask those questions. See http://www.ambysoft.com/downloads/surveys/AgileAdoptionRatesSummary.pdf. Note that Scott's survey's respondents did not represent such a focused Agile community - over half had little or no Agile experience.

[2] The June 2006 issue of the Agile Journal focused on measuring Agile projects. See http://www.agilejournal.com/component/option,com_magazine/func,show_edition/id,30/.

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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