The agile manifesto was published almost 20 years ago. The publishers of the agile manifesto looked to overthrow previous project management methodologies. The agile manifesto authors cast away what they considered burdensome. They looked to eliminate contracts, plans, and documentation. Along the way, agile became the latest consultant-speak to solve any firm’s problems.
Over the years Agile has morphed into CI/CD, DevOps, Extreme Programming, Kanban, Lean, SAFe and more buzzwords. The top agile methods employed by organizations include scrum (54%), scrum/XP Hybrid (10%), custom hybrid (14%), scrumban (8%), and kanban (5%).
Agile is a blanket term for a set of methodologies that emphasize collaboration within tightly-knit teams, iterative development, early delivery, continuous improvement, and the ability to respond rapidly to changing requirements. Despite these lofty goals some argue that agile has become as dogmatic as the predecessors it sought to overthrow.
Backlash against agile
Recent signs are pointing to a possible backlash against agile. California-based IT research firm Computer Economics reports that the growth in agile development is starting to taper off. Adoption was flat year over year, and we may be closing in on the ceiling for agile.
In their report, Agile Development Adoption and Best Practices, Computer Economics found that 60% of survey respondents practiced agile development in 2019, the same amount as practiced in 2018. In 2015, only 49% practiced agile, and that figure rose steadily until 2018.
David Wagner, senior director of research for Computer Economics concluded:
Most software developers will tell you that agile is the only way to develop software … However, when requirements are fairly stable and well-understood, a more traditional development approach may be best. Also, agile works best when developers can be assigned to single projects over a longer period of time which is not always possible, especially in smaller companies.
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Computer Economics concludes that Agile is an important tool for organizations with high-level development needs, such as software and cloud providers. However, for most enterprises that do little custom development, agile might not be right for them.
Corporate IT organizations that have not already adopted Agile are expected to slow in adapting it in the future. KPMG found (PDF) that 63% of business leaders claim that the maturity of agile project management is lower than that of traditional project management.
I always like to follow the money because it leads to interesting places. Here are some factoids around Agile. The project management software market size is projected to reach $6.68 billion by 2026.
- Two vendors Microsoft and Atlassian control 54% f the project management software market.
- Microsoft (MSFT) has the largest project management software market share with nearly 30%.
- Microsoft Project – 23.16%
- Azure DevOps Server – 4.34%
- Atlassian (TEAM) owns 24% of the project management software market share.
If we take these factoids together by 2026
- MSFT is set to bring in $1.8B in project management software by 2026.
- TEAM is set to bring in $1.7B in project management software by 2026.
- Jira – set to bring in nearly $1.3B
- Trello -will bring in nearly $380M
So following the money, it is very likely that intentional obfuscation on the part of corporate marketing machines at MSFT and TEAM to drive changes to PM methodologies in order to keep everyone on the planned obsolescence train and have to update PM and PPM software every year to match the latest agile methodology.
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Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.