Call for participation: What types of organisations adopt agile methods?

[Ant Grinyer]

Having worked in software development for over 15 years in many
organisations using different development methodologies such as
waterfall, RUP, Scrum and XP, I'm still not sure if there is a
specific 'type' of organisation that is more likely to adopt agile
approaches than others?

I guess it could be argued that those organisations that are more
innovative or open to change are more likely to adopt agile methods?

To try and gain more understanding, and because I have a passion for
software development methodologies, I started a PhD five years ago
(part-time) to look at this issue. I'm now at the point where I'm
conducting a short survey to determine what factors might or might not
influence the adoption of agile methods, in the hope to provide some
enlightenment. If we get enough participation, I then hope to report
this back to the group to see if there are indeed any trends.

The survey is short and should take around 5 - 10 minutes to complete,
so please bare with the scaled questions whereby you are asked to rate
your agreement against a list of statements. To participate, could I
kindly ask you to fill in the survey using the link below -

http://ou1211237011.agile-adoption.sgizmo.com

I believe if we can determine the characteristics of organisations
that adopt and do not adopt agile methods, we can get a better
understanding whether certain organisations are more conducive to
adopting agile methods?

Note this is NOT a marketing survey and is used for doctoral and
practitioner research purposes. All findings and results will be
published to the group and responses treated in strict confidence.
Evidence of my research can be found here:

http://www.computing.open.ac.uk/Publ...tion=computing
Your participation is greatly appreciated.
Kindest Regards
Ant Grinyer
----------
Business Analyst | Cegedim Pharmaceutical Solutions, UK
PhD Candidate | The Open University | Milton Keynes, UK

[Timo Geusch]

James Kanze <ja*********@gm ail.comwrites:

On Jul 11, 6:43 pm, con...@lewscano n.com wrote:

>As for not seeing the term "waterfall" prior to the promulgation of
the "agile" buzzword, you again show ignorance. I was taught the
"waterfall" method by that name in the late 1970s and early 80s by
people who believe in its efficacy.

Could you cite some references. Because I've talked to a lot of
people, and no one else seems to have ever seen it described,
except to compare their "better" method against.

I'm pretty sure Steve McConnell mentioned it in the first edition of
Code Complete back in the early/mid nineties. Unfortunately I've since
replaced it with the second edition so I can't verify this.

[conrad]

con...@lewscano n.com wrote:

As for not seeing the term "waterfall" prior to the promulgation of
the "agile" buzzword, you again show ignorance. *I was taught the
"waterfall" method by that name in the late 1970s and early 80s by
people who believe in its efficacy.

James Kanze writes:

Could you cite some references. *Because I've talked to a lot of
people, and no one else seems to have ever seen it described,
except to compare their "better" method against.

Have you considered googling for it?

/Wicked Problems, Righteous Solutions/ gives a good overview of all
the software-development methodologies extant in the mid-nineties,
with a thorough analysis of their strengths and weaknesses. It
predates "XP" and "agile".

<http://www.google.com/search?q="Wicke d+Problems%2C+R ighteous
+Solutions">

Other references: GIYF.

I am a reference, because my comments were based on my own personal
work experience. Shops where I worked in 1980-1981 practiced
waterfall development, ostensibly, and called it by that name.

Timo Geusch wrote:

I'm pretty sure Steve McConnell mentioned it in the first edition of
Code Complete back in the early/mid nineties. Unfortunately I've since
replaced it with the second edition so I can't verify this.

GIYF, James Kanze,

--
Lew

[Ian Collins]

James Kanze wrote:

>
Most of the techniques I've seen associated with it do produce
software with measurably lower quality and robustness than the
best current practice. (But of course, if you're "agile", you
don't take the time to measure, so you don't know this.)

Oh come on James, that's just not true. I have a number of XP developed
embedded products in the wild and by any measure the company uses, they
are the most robust products the company has ever shipped. Our main
measure was the only one that matters to our customers, defect reports.
The number has been vanishingly small, a small fraction of the number
for the previous generation controllers.

If you are an XP team supporting a buggy product, your most important
and visible measure - velocity will suffer.

The problem then is that it has been misused so often that it's
lost any real meaning. Or perhaps the real problem is that
people like Kent Beck didn't choose a more descriptive name.

Now here we agree!

--
Ian Collins.