Some agile processes are in use by nearly 70% of the respondents to the 2011 ALM Study completed by BZ Research, a division of BZ Media, publisher of SD Times. Further, Scrum continues to outpace the adoption of other agile processes, according to the study.
The numbers reflecting use of tools and processes have mostly held steady over the five years of the study, showing that agile development has been a mainstay of programming over that time, and that there is no significant new uptake among enterprise development shops. The survey was completed by 608 subscribers to SD Times between Sept. 27 and Oct. 7, 2011.
“Development managers and corporate IT managers have gotten the word about agile,” said Alan Zeichick, editorial director of SD Times and principal analyst at BZ Research. “But that doesn’t mean that they’ve necessarily bought into the named methodologies. While the use of Scrum indicates its strong position, development organizations are also rolling their own, picking and choosing the parts of agile that best fit their needs and cultures.”
The use of Scrum has risen from 31% of development shops in 2009 to 39% this year, according to the study. Meanwhile, lean software development has fallen from 18.1% in 2009 to 14.2% this year. The use of Extreme Programming and Agile Modeling also have dropped significantly from 2009. The biggest decline was in use of the Open Unified Process, which fell to 2% this year from 8% in 2009.
IBM Rational and Microsoft remain the best-known providers of application life-cycle management solutions among the respondents, but their mind share has slipped; IBM Rational dropped to 80.4% this year from 93% in 2007, and Microsoft declined to 74.4% this year from 86.5% in 2007. Electric Cloud, Kovair and UrbanCode had the largest percentage gains in awareness, according to the study.
