It’s been ten years since the writing of the Agile Manifesto. Let’s take a look and see how far we have come.
Here are some of findings from a survey by VersonOne to see how well Agile has been adopted. The information was collected from 4,770 participants from 91 different countries. We’re all pretty busy these days, so instead of checking out VersonOne’s entire survey I’ve pulled out some highlights listed below:
Who has adopted Agile?
- Not surprisingly, the majority of individuals who’ve adopted Agile are project managers (19%) followed by development managers at 10%. 22% of VPs/Directors of Development are leading their companies to begin adopting Agile into their workplace. 32% of enterprise companies with 250 or more employees are the forerunners of the Agile movement. The majority of companies had only 1 or 2 sites using Agile while 29% of participants stated that their company had 10 or more Agile teams.
What’s the average experience?
- The majorities of respondents have been practicing Agile for 1-5 years and are either extremely or moderately knowledgeable about Agile development practices.
Which Methodology is used the most?
- Scrum methodologies took the lead at 58%. For those a little less familiar with Agile, Scrum refers to an incremental, iterative framework for project management. The use of scrum methodology is to help focus on the management of software development projects, and can even be used to assist in running software maintenance teams or even just as a general project/program management approach.
Leading Causes of Failed Agile Projects:
- Many Agile products are unsuccessful because individuals within the organization lack experience with the method. 14% of those surveyed responded that the largest reason why their Agile projects failed is because there existed a lack of experience with Agile methods. Other leading causes for failure included the philosophy and or culture of the company conflicting with the values of being Agile as well as external pressure to follow traditional waterfall practices.

What’s the Benefit from Implementing Agile?
- After implementing Agile in the workplace, respondents stated that their company experienced improved managerial abilities as the biggest benefit of implementing Agile.
Although Agile has not been implemented or recognized in every workplace, in the ten years since its creation, Agile has quickly moved to the forefront of the corporate structure debate. It should be very exciting to see over the next few years how Agile adoption plays out.
Your Turn
Have you implemented Agile into your workplace?
How has it worked out for you?