InfoQ

News

Digital Focus Unveils Market Survey Results at Agile2006

Posted by Deborah Hartmann on Jul 26, 2006 10:49 PM

Community
Agile
Topics
Agile in the Enterprise
Tags
Interviews ,
Statistics ,
Process Adoption
A survey conducted by Agile software development industry leader, Digital Focus, concludes that interest in Agile development methods is growing across the IT landscape with 81 percent of those surveyed either actively using Agile development methodologies within their organization or looking for opportunities to do so. Agile practices address the critical challenge facing organizations today -- having the flexibility to respond to a changing business environment. Digital Focus president Erin Smith said:
"Our survey shows that Agile is gaining acceptance as a primary tool to meet today's IT challenges.  Agile's learning-driven approach to development, with its emphasis on continuous communication, testing and change, is fundamentally different from the traditional 'waterfall' methodology widely used today.  The survey underscores the fact that preconceived notions about software development -- namely that it should adhere to a static plan created and requirements defined at the outset of a project -- remain a central challenge to the wide adoption of agile."
Key findings of the Digital Focus Agile 2006 Market Survey include:
  • 46 percent of mid-sized companies are already adopting Agile practices company-wide; and while only 12 percent of large companies are using agile practices company-wide, 44 percent of these organizations are using Agile practices on a project;
  • 51 percent of all participants reported that the lack of knowledge or skill is one of the top three barriers to adopting Agile;
  • 56 percent of the executives surveyed saw the lack of internal experience and/or skills as a barrier to adopting Agile processes;
  •  IT and non-IT professionals are looking for agile practices to solve different problems: 51 percent of non-IT professionals are looking to agile to improve speed and predictability in software development, while 47 percent of IT professionals look to agile to help them manage the scope of projects while being more responsive to change.
The Digital Focus Agile 2006 Market Survey was developed to understand the extent to which Agile development is moving into the mainstream of IT practices, to better assess the drivers towards Agile adoption, and to identify the barriers leaders must overcome in order to establish agile development as a mainstream approach within their organizations. The survey sought to identify differences between how IT professionals and non-IT professionals view the drivers to change to agile development, and the challenges organizations face in adopting agile methods.  Launched at the Agile 2005 Conference to assess the state of agile adoption, the survey compiles the responses of 136 executives across 128 organizations ranging from less than 25 to over 5,000 employees. Mid-sized companies are defined as having 100-1,000 employees; large companies have greater than 1,000 employees.

Related Sponsor

VersionOne is recognized by Agile practitioners as the leader in Agile project management tools. Companies such as Adobe, BBC, CNN, Dow, HP, IBM, Sony and 3M have turned to VersionOne to help deliver greater value to their customers.

No comments

Watch Thread Reply

Educational Content

Bindings, Platforms, and Innovation

This presentation focuses on the Internet and separating myth from fact, history from the future, and the mundane from the imaginative. Bob Frankston presents a vision of what could and should be.

Orchestrating Long Running Activities with JBoss / JBPM

This article explores the use of JBoss and jBPM to implement design solutions that effectively address the issue of orchestrating long running activities.

Neo4j - The Benefits of Graph Databases

This presentation covers the use of graph databases as an optimal solution for data that is difficult to fit in static tables, rapidly evolving data or data that has a lot of optional attributes.

Realistic about Risk: Software development with Real Options

This session introduces Real Options and shows how it can help in running your project. Real Options is a decision-making process that can be used to manage risk.

Communication Flexibility Using Bindings

This article discusses the use of bindings on services and references (including the instance of non-configured bindings) as the means to implement SCA communications in a Web and SOA environment.

Writing DSLs in Groovy

After a short introduction to DSLs, Scott Davis plays with the keyboard showing how to approach the creation of a DSL by typing working snippets of Groovy code that get executed.

Scaling Agile with C/ALM (Collaborative Application Lifecycle Management)

IBM Rational and InfoQ present, Scaling Agile with C/ALM, an eBook showing organizations how to become “finely tuned software delivery machines” by enabling team integration and scaling.

Concurrent Programming with Microsoft F#

Amanda Laucher presents a real life enterprise application written in F#. She shows actual code snippets, explaining design decisions and suggesting how to use some of the F# constructs.