Agile’s Popularity Still on the Rise
I just ran across another article touting agile development’s growing popularity among enterprise-level organizations. On SearchCIO.com, executive editor Karen Guglielmo reports that, in spite of the disruptive nature of an agile implementation, more and more companies are finding it well worth the effort. Citing a survey the site conducted earlier this year with 631 participants, Guglielmo reports that “25% of 631 respondents said their organization used a rapid development methodology such as agile. Of those using it, 72% said it helped to accelerate projects, while 15% said it made it harder to manage end dates for projects. The last 13% reported no impact.” And to explain that tendency to accelerate projects, Forester senior analyst Clay Richardson explains, “Agile is better because it quickly delivers functionality to business users, maximizing adoption and input from key stakeholders through solution development. In addition, waterfall takes too long and provides less value because of lack of speed to market.”
For those of us who are already using agile to improve development efforts, this all may sound like old news. But the fact is that we’re still in the minority and, by and large, traditional management practices still dominate at most organizations. But with stories like this one, it’s encouraging to see agile moving closer to a tipping point, when it can become the standard approach to management.