Recently, the 17th annual State of Agile report was published. Like many of you, I also read it carefully and would like to share my observations in this post.
Value is the goal
Before we delve into the annual report, let's discuss why the state of Agile is relevant to us. This blog is called Value Visionary for a reason, isn't it? I strongly believe that being able to deliver value and improving the capability to deliver value is a meaningful goal. However, I also believe Agile is one of the tools in our toolbox to achieve this goal. Therefore, it is beneficial to understand Agile and how the adoption of Agile in organizations is progressing.
Below are the main conclusions I drew from the report, with a short interpretation of how I read the report. After this, I will provide my reaction to these conclusions in the 'my 2 cents' sections.
Agile Adoption Remains Strong
The report
Agile continues to be adopted widely across industries, with a notable increase in Engineering and R&D teams adopting Agile practices. However, there are significant challenges to its broader organisational adoption.
Last year, over seven in ten respondents (72%) said they were satisfied with the Agile practices in their company, while this year, that has dropped to three in five (59%).
The increasing trend towards hybrid and custom Agile approaches could indicate an evolving understanding and application of Agile methodologies to meet the unique needs of different organisations
my 2 cents
It sounds like companies, especially large ones, have lost their appetite for Agile. Taking a pessimistic viewpoint, it could be that we are not seeing a decrease since rolling back the introduction of Agile or an Agile transformation is no easy feat.
Interesting is why some of these large companies are not experiencing the value as much as others.
It could be that they did not implement Agile correctly or, as the trend toward hybrid approaches suggests, that they introduced an Agile way of working without getting rid of the 'old' way of working. I know you cannot always avoid a hybrid model, but it seriously makes it challenging to become successful, especially when there is more power in using the other way of working.
I prefer a good waterfall implementation over a bad Agile implementation
I also doubt if a hybrid approach was always chosen as the optimal design choice or if it was the result of making concessions to deal with resistance?
The positive news is that organizations are moving away from strictly following a single framework and are able to customize their Agile approach. This makes it easier to fit into the company and fully supports my message at the beginning. The goal should not be to implement an Agile framework but to use Agile to increase the value delivered by the organization.
Barriers to Adoption Persist
The report
Challenges such as organisational resistance, lack of leadership participation, and insufficient understanding of Agile within business teams remain significant barriers to broader Agile adoption.
Almost half say a general organisational resistance to change is a barrier for adopting Agile practices on the business side of the organisation, while two in five say not enough leadership participation is a barrier.
My 2 cents
Agile is a way to deal with inevitable change. If an organization is not willing or able to make that change, how are they dealing with changes over which they have no control? They will happen anyway and they will happen faster and faster.
Over one-third of respondents say the challenge for their organisation’s adoption of Agile is that their leadership doesn’t understand and puts up roadblocks, either knowingly or unknowingly.
As mentioned more often in our posts, leadership has an important role in the organization and obviously also in the adoption of an Agile way of working. So, leaders should turn into Agile leaders to make them successful and fully support the adoption of Agile.
Agile and DevOps Integration
The report
Agile principles are increasingly being integrated with DevOps practices to improve end-to-end visibility, cycle times, and overall efficiency in software development processes.
My 2 cents
In my view Agile and DevOps go hand in hand. Where Agile is saying a lot about the how to organise the teams and how work flows to these teams and the mindset that is needed to do this in a pragmatic, predictable and constant improving way. However, it does not say much about how to do the technical work involved in ICT of software development. For example. Agile recommends to work in small increments, but it does not explain how to do this in a traditional development process. DevOps is sharing practises how to move from a traditional development process to a CI/CD setup.
Among those not satisfied with Agile practices at their company, the top reason is because their company still has many legacy systems requiring a mixed approach.
So, also working on DevOps practices is helping to really deploy Agile way of working. Unfortunately I have seen that Agile and DevOps were considered two separate initiatives to be deployed one after the other.
Benefits of Agile
The report
Organisations report improved collaboration, better alignment with business objectives, and enhanced software quality as key benefits of Agile adoption.
My 2 cents
Let's end this post positively. The ones that are happy with Agile seem to also gain the benefits. I have also seen these benefits when Agile was implemented with the right intentions. Even, when the mastery level of Agile was not even that high. When done with the right intentions and understanding you will see that aligning on business objectives and collaboration within the development team but also between development team and stakeholders drastically improves. My observation is also that the people working in such an environment had more fun.
You can find the full report here.
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