Fewest dropped calls!
Remember just a few years back; when claiming the fewest dropped calls was the widespread advertising refrain from cellular providers? Limitations of networks and cell phone antennas meant some dropped calls, while frustrating, were to be expected. However, asserting your service will do the unacceptable (drop calls), but probably less often than those other guys, is hardly an ideal marketing angle. I always thought the tactic amounted to proclaiming “We Suck Less!”
Agile sucks…but not as much as the alternative
To better understand engineers’ interest, opinions, and trends, VDC distributes an extensive web-based survey to the development community in support of our Software & System Lifecycle Management Tools Market Intelligence Service. This year, nearly 29% of respondents using Agile / iterative development methods revealed their current projects were behind schedule. Clearly, these organizations need to improve their performance.
Yet organizations not using Agile methods fare much worse. As shown below, more than 38% of these developers report their current projects are behind schedule; and that’s despite code bases less than one third the size (by lines of code) of those using iterative development.
Agile / iterative development is not the panacea for all the challenges software developers face. For example, 30% of respondents to our survey cite “difficulty in maintaining adherence to specified process standards” as a significant challenge of using Agile method. But for organizations struggling through missed deadlines and overdue projects, our research suggests it is worth exploring.
More insight
For further investigation and discussion about Agile / iterative development methodology use and trends, please see our2012 Software & Systems Lifecycle Management Tools Market Intelligence Service. The fourth volume of this year’s intelligence service, “Agile in Embedded & Enterprise Systems” is available now. Included with this report are the findings from VDC’s 2012 Software and System Development survey which canvassed software developers and serves as the source of the figures used above. Some of the valuable insight provided in the full SSLM data set is a comparison over a number of dimensions of developers who are using iterative methods to those using more traditional methods.