'State of Agile' Survey Shows Wider Agile Adoption

Posted by Chris Sims on Sep 08, 2008

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Process & Practices

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Agile

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Surveys

The results of Version One's 3rd annual 'State of Agile' survey are in. According to the survey, agile practices are being used more widely and with impressive results. More than half of the respondents indicated that 90 - 100% of their organization's agile projects have been successful, and 93% indicated that agile practices had enhanced their ability to respond to changing priorities.

This year's survey was based on 2319 completed surveys, representing 80 countries. This compares to around 1700 surveys from 71 countries last year, and 722 surveys from 47 countries in 2006. The vast majority of respondents reported that they are actively involved in agile development, and most reported a year or more of experience practicing agile development methods.

The role most likely to be the initial champion for agile development was the VP/Director of Development, with a three-way tie for second place between 'Project Manager', 'Development Manager' and 'CIO/CTO'. The methodology most commonly used was Scrum, with 'Scum/XP Hybrid' coming in second.

The survey provided some interesting 2008 vs. 2007 comparisons regarding which particular practices where being employed. Almost universally, a greater percentage of respondents were employing each practice. The only exception was refactoring, which was used by 59% of respondents both this year and last. Practices that enjoyed the greatest increase in adoption were:

Taskboard		Up 31%
Iteration Planning		Up 21%
Daily Standup		Up 20%
Retrospectives		Up 20%

The practices that were most widely adopted were:

Iteration Planning		86%
Unit Testing		77%
Daily Standup		75%
Release Planning		72%

The good news is that the vast majority of respondents indicated that the vast majority of their agile projects succeed, with 55% of respondents reporting a 90 - 100% success rate.

What Percentage of the Organization's Agile Projects Succeed?

The benefits most widely cited by the survey participants were:

Enhanced Ability to Manage Changing Priorities		93%
Improved project Visibility		83%
Increased Productivity		74%
Improved Team Morale		74%

The full survey results are available on the Version One website, as are the 2007 survey results as well as the 2006 survey results.

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