Top 10 Insights from the 13th Annual State of Agile Report

It’s that time of year again.

CollabNet and VersionOne have released the findings of their annual ‘State of Agile Report’ for 2018.

For the second year, we sat down to dissect the report and share with you our top 10 most fascinating finds:

1. For the second year in a row, Business/IT alignment was cited as being one of the top 3 benefits for adopting agile. 2017 was the first time in 6 years that the top 3 benefits of adopting agile had changed from manage changing priorities, project visibility and increased team productivity. It’s great to see this trend towards better Business/IT alignment is speaking to the Principles of the Agile Manifesto — “business people and developers must work together daily throughout the project”.
2. We see the continued upward trend in terms of interest in DevOps in this year’s report, with 42% of respondents saying that DevOps transformation is “very important” and 73% reporting that a DevOps initiative is either planned or currently underway. We hypothesise that this increased/continued investment in DevOps is being driven by the tangible benefits of Business/IT alignment that respondents have cited over the past 2 years as being one of the top benefits of adopting agile.
3. Although respondents answers for the benefits of adopting agile have changed over time, their reasons for adopting agile have not changed for the last 5 years. Respondents have consistently cited accelerated product delivery, managing changing priorities and increase productivity as the key motivators for moving towards greater agility which seems to represent a discrepancy between the perceived benefits and the actualised benefits of adopting agile.
4. The Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe®), continues to be the most widely-used approach to scaling agile, with 30% of respondents citing it as the method they “follow most closely”. We’ve certainly felt this upward trend internally, as we continue to talk to and learn from our larger Easy Agile Programs customers.
5. Despite global trends of increasing distribution, we have seen a downward trend in the number of respondents citing they have distributed team members, which was 78% in 2018, down from 86% two years prior.
6. For the second year in a row, lack of experience with agile was not cited as being one of the top 3 challenges experienced with adopting agile. This seems to complement the trend showing respondents having longer experience practicing agile (34% of respondents say they have 3–5 years of agile experience).
7. We’re continually seeing the biggest challenge experienced adopting and scaling agile is that organisational culture is at odds with agile values (top response for the last 5 years). This is largely implicated by the shifting role of management, moving away from traditional waterfall command and control style, to one where agile encourages managers to empower and trust their teams to make decisions based on their expertise areas
8. For the second year in a row, customer/user satisfaction was ranked as the top measure for the success of agile initiatives (52% down from 57%) and the success of individual agile projects (this remained 46% for both years). Again we’re seeing a shift from traditional success metrics such as “budget vs. actual cost” and a move towards the Principles of the Agile Manifesto — “our highest priority is to satisfy the customer”
9. Not only did Product Roadmapping appear for the first time as one of the general tools used in Agile Project Management by respondents (50%), but it was also the tool that respondents were most likely to adopt in the future (27%). As Roadmapping evangelists here at Easy Agile, we’re really happy to see the inclusion of Roadmapping in this years’ report. Roadmapping allows us to better communicate both internally and externally the vision and direction of our products over time.
10. In saying that, we’re continuing to see the dominance and rising interest in Atlassian’s Jira, cited as the most used Agile Project Management tool by respondents (65% up from 53% in 2016). Jira has been the tool of choice for the last consecutive 3 years, previously dominated by Microsoft’s Excel whose popularity has steadily declined over the past 5 years (68% in 2014 to 48% in 2018).

We’re interested to hear about your own organisation’s journey to agility. What has your team found most effective? Were there elements of this years report that surprised you? We want to hear from you!

If you want to check out the full report, you can visit it here: 13th Annual State of Agile Report.