16 Agile Statistics [2022]: What You Need To Know About Agile Project Management

Research Summary. As an increasingly popular software building methodology, Agile has become a key component of software management for many companies. Whether you’re thinking about adopting Agile yourself or simply curious about current trends, this article will address how and why this methodology has hit the mainstream:

• At least 71% of U.S. companies are now using Agile.

• Agile projects have a 64% success rate, whereas projects under the competing methodology known as waterfall only have a 49% success rate.

• With that in mind, Agile projects are nearly 1.5X more successful than waterfall projects.

• After adopting Agile, companies have experienced an average 60% growth in revenue and profit.

• Scrum is the most popular Agile framework, with 61% of respondents from 76 countries reporting that they use it.

1. For further analysis, we broke down the data in the following ways:
   Adoption | Trends and Predictions | Industry

   

   The Benefits of Agile Adoption

   Clearly, there are some worthwhile benefits to adopting Agile. In this section, we’ll dive into those benefits in more detail, so you can get a picture of how Agile could work for your business. Here are the insights our research uncovered:

   

2. Only 9% of Agile projects fail.

   Which is significant and impressive, especially when compared to the waterfall methodology. A considerable 29% of waterfall fail, which is over 3X more failures than Agile.

   
   

3. Agile projects are nearly 1.5X more successful than waterfall projects.

   When it comes to success rate, Agile projects are successful 64% of the time, whereas waterfall projects are only successful 49% of the time.

4. The use of Full Scrum increases product quality by up to 250%.

   When teams create products using Full Scrum, defect density is significantly reduced. Those who did no estimates experienced over 20 defects, while those who used Full Scrum had less than ten defects.

5. Agile teams are 25% more productive.

   In fact, these teams are also 50 percent faster to market than non-agile teams, making them highly effective in the long run. Much of this can be attributed to Agile keeping teams more focused on the tasks at hand.

6. Agile has helped 98% of companies become more successful.

   This is why it’s no surprise that 71% of companies are implementing Agile, and several Fortune 500 companies have been drawn to Agile as well.

7. Agile Adoption Statistics

   Adopting Agile comes with several benefits for companies, which is why so many companies are switching. For most, Agile comes with increased growth, productivity, quality, and more. Here are the facts:

8. After adopting Agile, companies have experienced an average 60% growth in revenue and profit.

   However, of the 1,300 IT and business leaders surveyed worldwide, only a small portion could implement Agile fully and see these benefits. Therefore, Agile is best used when fully adopted and not only partially implemented.

9. The top 5 reasons teams switch to Agile include productivity, accountability, collaboration, prioritization, and feedback.

   With the latter four contributing to increased productivity. In fact, increased communication and team focus contribute to a 25% increase in productivity on agile products.

10. Around 80% of federal IT projects have chosen to adopt Agile.

    While not the root cause, this adoption likely coincides with the trend of shorter and less expensive IT projects. For instance, between 2004 and 2015, the duration of major federal IT projects decreased from nine years of average development time to less than two years.

11. More than any other factor, 44% of Agile projects fail due to a lack of experience with Agile methods.

    Other common reasons for failure include company culture clashing with Agile values (42%), lack of management (38%), and external pressure to continue older traditions like waterfall (37%). And this can have a huge cost, as the American government has lost a staggering $32 billion due to failed IT projects alone.

12. Agile Trends and Predictions

    While it’s clear that Agile has become more popular over time, how fast has it actually grown? Further, it’s important to analyze where this methodology will go in the future. Our research shows that:

13. The number of companies adopting Agile has increased by up to 88% since 2002.

    In 2002 the number of companies using Agile was around or just under 10%. However, over time that number has grown to 80% in some sectors. This is especially true for federal IT projects, which have seen a huge transition toward Agile methodology.

14. Agile adoption ramped up in 2020, with 43 percent of organizations saying their momentum towards it has increased in the past 90 days.

    In part, it could result from an increased number of remote workers, as these workers need to have more efficient communication with each other. In fact, 33% of organizations say they’re adopting Agile to help manage distributed teams.

15. Scrum is the most popular Agile framework, with 61% of respondents from 76 countries reporting that they use it.

    One of Scrum’s main advantages is that development teams can work simultaneously rather than sequentially. However, other popular Agile frameworks include Kanban, Extreme Programming, Lean, Dynamic Systems Development Method, Crystal, Feature Driven Development, and more.

16. JIRA software is the most popular software used in Agile management and development teams.

    JIRA software is popular due to its many capabilities. For example, Agile features in JIRA include issue types, including user stories and bugs, boards, workflows, backlog, roadmap, and multiple types of reporting charts.

17. Agile by Industry Statistics

    While Agile adoption is growing ever more popular, there are also variations in popularity between different industries. According to our research:

18. 86% of international software developers use Agile.

    This means the vast majority now use this methodology around the world. In fact, software development firms only plan to become more Agile as time goes on.

19. Only 27.4% of manufacturing companies rely entirely on Agile.

    While this number does seem much lower than other statistics mentioned, much of it can be attributed to a lack of full implementation. For example, 56.6% of manufacturing companies rely on a combination of methodologies, including Agile.

20. 88% of international workers and professionals believe Agile improves the quality of life.

    And this is coming from a wide range of respondents, representing 91 countries and 27 industries. With this in mind, a majority of people who work with Agile also approve of it.

Agile Project Management FAQ

1. What is Agile project management?

   Agile project management is an iterative approach to building and managing software development projects. In general, some of Agile’s main focal points are creating continuous releases and using each iteration to implement customer feedback.

   Overall, on a basic level, Agile builds software over time from the start of the project instead of delivering a final project to the end of the cycle. If you’re unfamiliar, you might think of this in terms of game development, where a beta version is released to gather player feedback before the final product is released.

2. How widely used is Agile?

   Agile is widely used by at least 71% of U.S. companies. Additionally, Scrum is the most popular Agile framework, with 61% of respondents from 76 countries reporting that they use it.

   This number is only increasing as well, as the number of companies adopting Agile has increased by up to 88% since 2002, where the number of companies using Agile was around or just under 10%. This is especially true for federal IT projects, where around 80% of federal IT projects have chosen to adopt Agile.

3. What are Agile metrics?

   Agile metrics are standards that aid in monitoring a software development team throughout a software project’s development. The metrics mainly serve to inform the team on how productive they’ve been and also allow them to assess product quality. For these reasons, Agile metrics are an essential component of building software.

4. What is so good about Agile?

   What’s so good about Agile is that it allows a team to critique, debug, and improve software more effectively during the development process. The system of testing prototypes and receiving customer feedback allows for highly tested products.

   Further, this framework also supports prioritization and teamwork, as customer feedback and Agile metrics allow teams to assign tasks accurately.

5. What percentage of projects use Agile methodology?

   80% of IT projects use Agile methodology. This is by far the majority, and since their widespread adoption of Agile, these federal IT projects have seen their average development time shrink from nine years to two years.

   As far as the private sector goes, 71% of companies have or are implementing Agile, including several Fortune 500 companies, and 86% of software developers around the world use Agile methodology.

   In 2020, as a significant number of companies moved to have the majority of their employees work remotely, 43% of organizations said they were moving more quickly in their efforts to adopt Agile, with 33% of companies saying they need it to help with managing teams whose members all work remotely.

6. How is success measured with Agile?

   Success is measured with Agile by measuring whether a project is completed on time or not. This is only one of many ways teams measure their success with Agile, but it’s the most common, with 58% of survey respondents saying they use this method.

   On-time delivery doesn’t just mean finishing the project by a deadline; it also means meeting expectations about what is going to be delivered by that deadline.

   The second-most common method of measuring success with Agile is through product quality, with 48% of those surveyed saying this is how they measure their success. With this method, meeting deadlines isn’t enough: The software also needs to have continuously positive testing results.

   Other common measures of success include customer/user satisfaction, productivity, and business value.

7. What is the most popular Agile methodology?

   Scrum is the most popular Agile methodology. 61% of survey respondents said they use it, the most of any other Agile framework. These respondents were spread out across 76 countries, showing that Scrum is the most popular choice around the world, not just in the U.S.

   Many people choose to use Scrum because teams can work simultaneously instead of only sequentially. This helps team members better coordinate on projects and complete them more efficiently – especially when they’re working remotely around the world.

   Some of the other popular Agile frameworks are Kanban, Extreme Programming, Lean, Dynamic Systems Development Method, Crystal, and Feature Driven Development.

Conclusion

Undoubtedly, Agile project management is a highly popular software building methodology, with at least 71% of U.S. companies using it today. Further, 61% of respondents from 76 countries are now using Scrum, the most popular Agile framework.

This, combined with 88% of international workers and professionals believing that Agile improves the quality of life, indicates growth going forward. After all, the number of companies adopting Agile has increased by up to 88% since 2002, where the number of companies using Agile was around or just under 10%.

Going forward, we can expect Agile to become more and more widely used and fully implemented due to its customer-centered, incremental approach to software development.

Sources:

1. Boldare. “The great dilemma. Agile or waterfall?” Accessed on October 27th, 2021.

2. Clearcode. “Agile vs Waterfall: Project Success and Failure Rates.” Accessed on October 27th, 2021.

3. CA Technologies. “The Impact of Agile. Quantified.” Accessed on October 27th, 2021.

4. Smartbear. “Why Agile Development Teams Are 25% More Productive.” Accessed on October 27th, 2021.

5. Techliance. “What Is Agile Software Development? Benefits of Agile.” Accessed on October 27th, 2021.

6. HBR. “Survey Data Shows That Many Companies Are Still Not Truly Agile.” Accessed on October 27th, 2021.

7. Deloitte. “Agile in Government.” Accessed on October 27th, 2021.

8. Agile Alliance. “8 Reasons Why Agile Projects Fail.” Accessed on October 27th, 2021.

9. Knowledge Hut. “Key Insights from the 2020 State of Agile Report.” Accessed on October 27th, 2021.

10. Ubuntu Pit. “The 10 Best Agile Frameworks: Choosing The Right Framework For You.” Accessed on October 27th, 2021.

11. Zepel. “11 Agile Tools for Project Management and Software Development.” Accessed on October 27th, 2021.

12. Hygger. “Why Agile is So Popular in Project Management World.” Accessed on October 28th, 2021.

13. Forbes. “Is Agile Really Worth It? Evidence Says Yes, If You Do These 4 Things.” Accessed on October 28th, 2021.

Author

Jack Flynn

Jack Flynn is a writer for Zippia. In his professional career he’s written over 100 research papers, articles and blog posts. Some of his most popular published works include his writing about economic terms and research into job classifications. Jack received his BS from Hampshire College.