This is Part 2 (<< go back to Part 1 | go to Part 3 >>)
This is not a perfect survey. In fact, it is probably a lousy one. I decided not to ask the participants for any demographic data (locations, job titles, organization size, etc.) The main reason was that this would further increase the size of the survey, which was already quite large. I never like those kinds of demographic questions myself, and I feared that the number of participants would drop if I included any more questions.
Of course, lack of demographic data also meant that I could not compensate for selection bias. But I don't believe it would have made much of a difference. This survey was promoted by dozens of different bloggers, web sites and twitterers, and we can therefore expect a reasonable differentiation among the participants. And looking at the results, I think we succeeded in that.
So yes, the statistics are probably skewed, but not so much as to be unusable...
Note: you can also analyze the data yourself in big on-line sortable tables: here (created by Mario Menger) and here (created by Maciej Gren).
| Which practices were considered AGILE, BUT NOT IMPORTANT? | ||
| Area | Best practice | Score |
| Design | System Metaphor | 67.8% |
| Organization | Scrum of Scrums | 63.0% |
| Design | CRC Cards | 61.2% |
| Requirements | Planning Poker | 60.9% |
| Process | Kanban Board | 59.2% |
| Process | Story Points | 58.9% |
| Construction | Pair-Programming / Pairing | 58.5% |
| Organization | Scrum Master | 57.5% |
| Construction | Behavior Driven Development | 56.3% |
| Process | Burn Down Charts / Burn Up Charts | 56.0% |
Comments: These last few top 10 lists might be the most interesting results of the survey. I have compared the percentage of people claiming that a practice is agile with the number of people saying the practice is nevertheless not important. The difference between these results led to this list of practices that are agile, but not important, with the System Metaphor being a clear winner.
| Which practices were considered IMPORTANT, BUT NOT AGILE? | ||
| Area | Best practice | Score |
| Construction | Configuration Management | 22.0% |
| Process | Risk Management | 22.4% |
| Construction | Source Control / Version Control | 24.0% |
| Construction | Issue Tracking / Bug Tracking | 25.0% |
| Testing | System Testing | 26.3% |
| Process | Root Cause Analysis / 5 Whys | 29.2% |
| Construction | Coding Style / Coding Guidelines / Coding Standard | 30.0% |
| Testing | Integration Testing | 30.4% |
| Testing | Smoke Testing / Build Verification Test | 30.8% |
| Design | User Interface Prototyping | 31.8% |
Comments: This is the reverse list of practices that are considered important, but not agile. In this case Configuration Management is the winner, closely followed by Risk Management. It seems people think that agile does not have risk management built-in, as some agilists claim, and agile alone is not enough in managing risk, as I have claimed before.
| Which practices were considered AGILE, BUT NOT APPLIED? | ||
| Area | Best practice | Score |
| Design | System Metaphor | 77.3% |
| Organization | Scrum of Scrums | 75.8% |
| Process | Kanban Board | 74.8% |
| Construction | Behavior Driven Development | 71.5% |
| Design | CRC Cards | 70.1% |
| Construction | Pair-Programming / Pairing | 69.9% |
| Process | Value Stream Mapping | 68.1% |
| Requirements | Minimum Marketable Features | 65.2% |
| Organization | On-Site Customer / Product Owner | 64.5% |
| Process | Lead Time / Cycle Time | 64.4% |
Comments: This is the top 10 list of practices that people consider to be agile, but are not applying in their organizations. These are probably some of the most context-specific practices, that people will only use when applicable. Again, there are no testing practices here.
| Which practices were considered APPLIED, BUT NOT AGILE? | ||
| Area | Best practice | Score |
| Construction | Issue Tracking / Bug Tracking | 23.8% |
| Construction | Source Control / Version Control | 24.0% |
| Construction | Configuration Management | 28.6% |
| Construction | Coding Style / Coding Guidelines / Coding Standard | 31.2% |
| Testing | System Testing | 31.7% |
| Testing | Integration Testing | 32.6% |
| Process | Risk Management | 36.1% |
| Testing | Smoke Testing / Build Verification Test | 38.0% |
| Testing | Unit Testing | 41.4% |
| Construction | Software Metrics / Code Metrics & Analysis | 41.5% |
Comments: And here we have the reverse list: practices that people apply in their organizations, but do not consider to be agile. It is quite interesting to see these are (almost) only practices from the Construction and Testing categories. Issue Tracking makes its first appearance in the top position.
| Which practices were considered IMPORTANT, BUT NOT APPLIED? | ||
| Area | Best practice | Score |
| Process | Lead Time / Cycle Time | 29.2% |
| Process | Value Stream Mapping | 29.7% |
| Requirements | Minimum Marketable Features | 30.9% |
| Process | Root Cause Analysis / 5 Whys | 30.9% |
| Design | Domain Driven Design | 33.6% |
| Requirements | Product Vision / Vision Statement | 34.2% |
| Process | Kanban Board | 34.4% |
| Requirements | Usage Scenarios | 34.7% |
| Construction | Behavior Driven Development | 34.8% |
| Organization | On-Site Customer / Product Owner | 35.7% |
Comments: We're almost near the end... This is the list of practices that people consider to be important, but that they are not applying in their organizations. We see the lean practices dominating the results, indicating that many people are interested in lean, but they are not applying the practices yet.
| Which practices were considered APPLIED, BUT NOT IMPORTANT? | ||
| Area | Best practice | Score |
| Construction | Issue Tracking / Bug Tracking | 51.2% |
| Requirements | Planning Poker | 50.3% |
| Construction | Source Control / Version Control | 50.0% |
| Organization | Scrum Master | 49.6% |
| Process | Timeboxing / Fixed Sprints / Fixed Iteration Length | 49.1% |
| Process | Iteration Planning / Planning Game / Sprint Planning | 48.9% |
| Construction | Coding Style / Coding Guidelines / Coding Standard | 48.8% |
| Process | Burn Down Charts / Burn Up Charts | 48.4% |
| Process | Sprint Backlog | 48.2% |
| Requirements | Requirement Prioritization | 48.1% |
Comments: And finally the reversed list: the practices that are applied, but that people think are not really important. Issue Tracking is topping the list again.
This was Part 2 (<< go back to Part 1 | go to Part 3 >>)
Note: you can also analyze the data yourself in big on-line sortable tables: here (created by Mario Menger) and here (created by Maciej Gren).
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