How Agile Are You? – The Results

Last week we asked, “how agile are you,” to learn if our members (and the companies they work for) follow the lofty goals the Agile Manifesto set. 44 members responded to last week's survey. Of course, given the small sample size, take these results with a grain of salt.

We learned that 76.7% of users do take customer feedback into account when working on projects, and that 81.4% of participants hold regular meetings to discuss and collaborate on development issues. This focus on interactions between individuals inside and outside the company is one of the primary goals of the Agile Manifesto.

While DZone members are exceling at these two metrics, it’s odd that only 66.7% are holding regular retrospectives to review the progress they’ve made. One thing I learned about when speaking with Jerry Stubbs a few weeks ago is that organizations can lose a grip on Agile methods by becoming complacent and falsely assuming they don’t need to take the extra step of practices like retrospectives.

Another interesting note is that only 50% of users believe they’re practicing Continuous Delivery. Most Agile experts believe that DevOps methodologies are a natural next step for Agile development, and the manifesto in particular points to “continuous delivery of working software” as one of it’s principles. I hear there’s a good resource on the Internet for plenty of knowledge about DevOps…

Perhaps a bit unsurprisingly, we also learned that 75% of our members have had deadlines set by their managers. This is not specifically against the recommendations of the Manifesto, but it's better to avoid strict deadlines in order to ensure that software works when it is eventually delivered.

Conclusion

So no, not everyone is operating exactly as the Agile Manifesto puts forth, but it’s encouraging to see such a large percentage of users and their organizations have adopted key principles of Agile thinking, primarily when it comes to team collaboration and customer feedback.

Is there anything else you’d like to know about DZone’s audience? Let us know and your question might make it into one of our weekly polls!