Is Agile the 2015-2016 norm?

    It seems that people and organizations embracing Agile have reached the critical mass. A few studies on this topic revealed that actually developers are the ones embracing Agile. The executives are tougher to be convinced by the benefits and to make this move towards Agile, despite its spread beyond software development.

    Agile is successfully working in marketing, HR, cross-departments operations, client relationships, product management. The whole set of Agile methodologies contains even business growth know-how and improved quality standards. But, as in every revolution, the "old-style" leaders are those who fight against the change. I know that it is only a matter of time for Agile to be the absolute winner.

    Surveys made with the developers show us that they got the right benefits of Agile set of methodologies. Here are a few ones:

• The possibility to handle the continuously changing priorities;
• A better overall productivity;
• An improved project visibility (in BDD this goes to "Project Live Documentation");
• An improved quality of the final product;
• Smaller risks;
• Smaller time to market;
• Better alignment between IT and business objectives (an improved Biz-IT Bridge);
• A simpler development process;
• An improved engineering discipline.

    As a conclusion of these studies, conducted by VersionOne and HP, the answer for the question in the title is "Yes, Agile is the new norm."

    If you want to read more details, please find them in these articles:

• Agile gains, but executives are completely clueless, survey finds
• Survey: Is agile the new norm?