In a Follow-Up Survey Respondents Said Agile Adoption Has Increased 33% In Response to COVID-19
Plano, TX – May 28, 2020 – Digital.ai, creator of the industry’s first intelligent Value Stream Platform, today announced the release of the 14th annual State of Agile report. The company also released supplemental findings regarding Agile and the impact of COVID-19. Produced by CollabNet VersionOne, now part of Digital.ai, the report documents the experiences of more than 1,100 IT and business professionals across a range of industries and roles worldwide. With 40,000 participants contributing over 14 years, the State of Agile report is the longest running and most widely cited Agile survey in the world and provides global enterprises with comprehensive data to benchmark and guide their Agile practices.
Agile adoption improves key capabilities needed to respond to current business challenges, especially those resulting from the pandemic. With 60 percent of survey respondents saying Agile has helped increase speed to market, 41 percent agreeing they are better able to manage distributed teams, and 58 percent saying they have improved team productivity it is clear these practices are invaluable during these challenging times.
“Our all-in move to the cloud in recent years allowed us to go to fully virtualized in one day,” said Kim Gokce, Sr. Director IT Capabilities at The Coca-Cola Company. “Our people showcased their agility in immediately reorganizing the work. For me, it was a ‘burn the ships’ moment on our journey to agility.”
In mid-May 2020, Digital.ai conducted a brief supplemental survey of respondents to learn more about how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected their Agile adoption. Supplemental findings reveal:
55 percent say their company plans to increase the use of Agile in the next 12-14 months. This is an increase of 13 percent over the original survey completed just five months ago.
43 percent of organizations say their momentum for Agile adoption has increased over the past 90 days, with 15 percent saying it has increased significantly.
33 percent say they increased or expanded Agile adoption in the last 90 days to help manage distributed teams.
Other notable findings from the 14th annual report, completed in December 2019, include:
Risk and compliance continue to trend upward, as the value of identifying and measuring technical risk prior to deployment increased by 54 percent and the importance of automated audit compliance and governance across control points increased by 10 percent over last year.
A significant shift in Agile techniques occurred, as product road-mapping increased nine percent while release planning decreased 11 percent. Drivers for this change may include a general increase in continuous integration/continuous deployment and better-defined program increment planning.
The Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe®) continues to be the most popular scaling method cited by respondents, increasing 5 percent over last year and outpacing the number two choice, Scrum@Scale, by 19 percent.
“We are proud that SAFe continues to be the most popular, effective scaling method on the market,” says Dean Leffingwell, Creator of SAFe and Chief Methodologist at Scaled Agile Inc. “Since the earliest days at Scaled Agile, our core belief has been simple: better software and systems make the world a better place. What has emerged during this global pandemic is confirmation that—given the right environment—remote Agile teams can be highly productive, and enterprises continue to get outstanding business benefits from applying SAFe.”
For the first time, the Annual State of Agile survey results were filtered along demographic lines to reveal insights beyond the general results. The analysis indicated a correlation between length of time practicing Agile, improved time to market, and the ability to manage changing priorities. The survey indicated that companies with more than 20,000 people were more likely to be practicing Agile for at least five years. While companies with less than 1,000 people continue to mature quickly and are increasingly embracing a broader view of business agility by applying Agile principles to areas of the business outside development, IT, and operations.
“As Digital.ai we are pleased to continue providing the State of Agile report to the software development community,” said Ashok Reddy, CEO of Digital.ai. “This year more than half of the IT and business professionals surveyed said their organizations are currently implementing Value Stream Management (VSM) or are planning to do so. As Agile practices mature beyond product development, we expect more organizations to embrace VSM to unify their value streams and drive value for the business, and we look forward to helping them achieve their goals.”
About the Report
The 14th annual State of Agile survey was conducted from August to December of 2019, with an updated questionnaire sent to select customers in May of 2020. Survey respondents include individuals from a broad range of industries in the global software development community. Global survey representation increased more than 10 percent this year, with more than 59 percent of respondents located outside of North America. A total of 1,121 full survey responses were collected, analyzed, and prepared into a summary report.The 14th annual State of Agile report is available for download at www.stateofagile.com.Join us on June 17th for a live webinar exploring the State of Agile in 2020 and learn about the latest trends, the COVID-19 impact, and what’s next in Agile. Register now.Share This: Read the @Digitalaisw 14th annual State of Agile report to learn about changes in the #software industry! #StateOfAgile #Agile #DevOps www.stateofagile.com
About Digital.ai
Digital.ai enables enterprises to focus on outcomes instead of outputs, create greater business value faster, and deliver secure digital experiences their customers trust. The Digital.ai Value Stream Platform seamlessly integrates all the disparate tools and processes across the various value streams, uses data and AI/ML to create connective tissue between them, and provides the real-time, contextual insights required to drive and sustain successful digital transformation. With Digital.ai, enterprises have the visibility they’ve been seeking to deliver value, drive growth, increase profitability, reduce security risk, and improve customer experience. Learn more at digital.ai
Press Release
May 28, 2020
