Earlier this week Voke, a US based analyst firm that focuses on application lifecycle and its global transformation, published what can only be called a controversial report on Agile methodologies and their implementation across different technology companies. You can find the report on Voke’s website, but you’ll need a premium subscription to view its contents. You can also find a detailed summary of the report by David Ramel on the Application Development trends website.
The report, entitled “The Agile Dilemma”, is backed by data from a survey completed by over 200 participants - representatives of technology and non-technology companies that use or had used Agile development. Its aim was to provide context for organizations that are evaluating the Agile approach for their teams. Based on the participants’ comments the report defines Agile as a “developer-centric” approach that allows the exclusion of QA and SysOps from the process. It also states that Agile principles allow developers to “push back on processes, tools, documentation, and following plans”. This, combined with a high number of participants (40%) reporting no success with Agile, leaves the authors of the report less than enthusiastic about the methodology: “Be aware that the Agile movement might very well just be either a developer rebellion against unwanted tasks and schedules or just an opportunity to sell Agile services including certification and training”, they say.
Outside of the report some interesting conclusions may be drawn from the survey answers - 64% of the participants found the transition to Agile “confusing, hard or slow”. Only 28% report success with the new approach. The main benefits reported were faster releases and more feedback. There are plenty of Agile success stories and articles avaliable on the Internet that contradict Voke’s report. There are also members of the tech community that agree with the report completly. What is your take on Agile? Do you think it is a massive scam or do you agree with one of the commenters on the slashdot website when they ask “...did the analysts just talk to the wrong 200 people?"