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This section presents a summary of the recent industrial studies and research papers that investigated the deployment of agile software process in software organizations.

1.6.1 Industry based evidences

An online survey conducted by MethodsAnd-Tools.com in 2005 to provide information about the rate of adoption of agile development indicates about 40% of the 232 participants organizations had adopted agile software processes and another 20% were evaluating them in pilot projects to evaluate their capability for future adaptation.

The same survey conducted on February 2008 with 502 participants, comparing the 2008 and 2005 results, indicates that the level of the agile movement had increased and only 13% of the organizations were not aware of any agile software practices. Full deployment numbers had doubled in 2008 to reach 17%, compared to 8% in 2005 and the total rate of various adoption levels is 56% compared to 41% in 2005. The conclusion drawn is that the importance of the agile approach is growing in the software development organizations and many software organizations are moving to deploy agile software process instead of traditional software model.

IBM Rational Methods Group conducted a survey on March 2006 to analyze the status of different agile software processes such as XP, SCRUM, FDD and DSDM. The survey made

online was based on a previous survey made by Shine Technologies. The survey is not limited to one geographical location to collect evidences from global and local software organizations to analyze their adoption as well as their understanding to agile software practices. There were 4232 participants, divided based on the size of the software organizations as of table 1.4.

Table 1.4 IBM rational methods group survey

Size # Respondent Percentage

1-10 people 1353 32% 11 to 50 877 21% 51 to 100 422 10% 101 to 200 332 8% 201 to 500 310 7% 501 to 1000 232 5% 1000 to 2000 142 3% 2000+ 564 13%

Figure 1.3: presented the answers of the participants to a multiple choice question: “which agile process your organization is using”?

Figure 1.3 The extent of use of different agile process reported in Ambler (2006)

Figure 1.3 shows that the XP was the most widely used at almost 40%. The IBM Rational Methods Group report states that “it is no surprise that XP and Scrum are popular options”.

1.6.2 Academic based evidences

Vijayasarathy and Turk (2008) reports on an online survey to find the percentage of adoption of agile software process and to investigate the factors that influence their adoption as well as to determine the agile software processes that are commonly in use. Data were collected from Yahoo discussion groups that focus on agile software process and the feedback represents a sample from 17 different countries (USA, Canada, India, United Kingdom, Australia, Colombia, Mexico and New Zealand, etc.). There were 198 participating software professionals with an average of 15.5 (median = 15.0) years of experience with software development and 3.9 (median = 3.0) years of agile experience. The survey findings can be summarized as follows:

• 90% of the participants of this survey had a basic understanding of agile development practices and 81% were either using or planning to use agile methods in their organizations.

• XP is reported to be used the most extensively, ranking 5.4 on a 7-point scale. Followed by Scrum and Agile Modeling with rankings of 3.5 and 3.4, respectively. AUP (the Agile Unified Process) came in last with a ranking of 1.9.

Schindler (2008) conducted a study to analyze the responses of a total set of 400 software development organizations. The organizations were classified based on team size (micro, small, medium and large). The distribution of the participating organizations is: 19.0% micro, 28.6% small, 11.9% medium and 40.5% large organizations. The survey started on 29th of July and ended on 25th of August 2008 and was conducted via telephone. The main findings of this study can be summarized as follows:

• A majority of the interview participants (77%) claimed to have a basic understanding about agile software development methods.

• When participants were asked to name the agile process used by them, Extreme Programming (XP) was mentioned by 46% and Scrum by 32.8%. The sample indicates that XP was used by 53.2% of the developers and by 38.9% of the project managers. Scrum was mentioned by 29.8% of the developers and 33.3% of the project managers. • 44.3% of the total participants, (42.6%) developers and (52.8%) managers, mentioned that

their organization was trying to adopt agile software development.

All the mentioned industrial surveys and papers concur that some software organizations have successfully deployed agile software process such as XP or some practices of agile process such as pair programming, agile modeling, test driven development, etc. The above studies have different viewpoints i.e. industrial viewpoints or academic viewpoints. Table 1.5 shows the main strengths and weaknesses identified in each of these surveys.

Table 1.5 Comments on the agile surveys

Survey author Comments

Methods And- Tools (2005,

2008)

Little information is provided regarding the methodology used for collecting and analysing the obtained data.

The survey is biased to sample of software organizations that already have interest in agile software development.

Less information is given regarding the essence and the quality of sample that has been conducted.

IBM Rational Methods Group

(2006)

Data has been collected using online multiple choice questions. Little information is provided regarding the expertise of the participants.

Little information is provided regarding the size and the complexity of the projects that have used the agile software processes.

Vijayasarathy (2008)

The data was collected using yahoo discussion groups that focused on agile software processes.

The survey is biased to a sample and participants who most likely have an expertise in agile software processes.