Agile is skyrocketing
The progression of Agile Project Management is evident, and it is noted that 73.7% of organizations are adopting agile, compared to 35% in 2009. The main market segment that agile fulfills the best is organizations that bring in less than $50 million in revenue. 89.2% of these companies use agile to develop products and services. However, agile is not absent in >$2B organizations, since 34,5% of them are somewhat* agile.
* Blended usage of waterfall and agile.
Agile nitty-gritty stats
– In 2013, there were 30.3% hardcore agilistas, compared to 12.8% in 2012.
– In 2013, there were 73.7% hybrid agile users (meaning that they used some form of agile, but didn’t go all the way), compared to 65.3% in 2012.
– Agile has lead to increased profitability for 73.2% of organizations, compared to 5.6% for organizations that used waterfall.
Agile makes money
In terms of profitability and increased productivity, 86.9% of agile users are saying that the adoption of agile has attributed profit gains. That alone is a major advantage, and one of the main concepts of the agile methodology. Not only are you releasing your product on time, but also keeping it in budget by reducing the waste.
Agile vs Waterfall
Numbers are showing that 65.8% of waterfall users associate agile with increased profit margins. A mere 13.2% believe that waterfall would increase profits. Isn’t that funny, huh. We know that many traditional Project Managers and waterfall users are taking the leap to agile, and find the agile framework as an alternative. How many times have we seen project managers at Agile20XX and the Scrum Gatherings? PM’s all aboard!
So what is common across high performing product teams, and what is required to achieve high level performance?
Agile’s Five Key Factors
– Unwavering executive team support
– Strong product team alignment
– Post-product development focus
– Assigning core team members
– Onboarding
Further reading:
The Study of Product Team Performance, 2013
The Forrester Wave™: Agile Development Management Tools, Q2 2010