Agile has become mainstream in software development. Most organization apply one or more agile methods like Scrum, XP, Kanban, or Lean, and enterprises are deploying scaling frameworks like SAFe, DAD, LeSS or Nexus. But do we actually know how these methods and frameworks are helping us to be successful in delivering valuable products and services, supporting the organization in reaching their business goals?
During the years there have been several investigations of the business benefits that agile has brought. Below you can find a list of research, studies, and reports that provide quantified insight into the business benefits of agile.
Reports on the business benefits of agile
The following studies on the business benefits of agile are known to me. They can be used to build a business case for deploying agile, benchmarking, or as a reference for quantifying and measuring the value that agile can bring to an organization:
- Agile Performance Metrics by Rally and the Software Engineering Institute
- Six Agile Method Take Aways from the Reifer 2014 Quantitative Analysis of Agile Methods Study
- Evaluating Agile and Scrum with Other Software Methodologies door Capers Jones
- The Agile Impact Report, an investigation by QSM Associates for Rally Software.
- The Business Value of Using Agile Project Management for New Products and Services by David Rico.
- Economics of Software Quality by Capers Jones and Olivier Bonsignour
- Agile Werkt (in Dutch) by Hennie Huijgens
- Evidence of Success of Agile Projects, data from the Columbus Agile Productivity Benchmark Project
- New The Business Value of Agile Transformation by SolutionsIQ
- New Quantitative Analysis of Agile Methods Study by Donald J. Reifer
- New Forecasting The Value Of DevOps Transformations by DevOps Research and Assessment
- New 100 to 1 Ratio for Agile Defect Prevention Over Traditional Methods by Nancy Van Schooenderwoert
Related articles, books and videos
These resources can help you to lean more about measuring the business value of agile:
- Value Based Software Engineering, published by Springer, introduced by Barry Boehm
- Measuring the Value of Agile Adoption by Ben Linders, published on InfoQ
- Agile Practice: The Competitive Advantage for a Digital Age by Atlassian and Harvard Business Review Analytic Services
- New Business value and ROI of agile vs. traditional methods by Sally Elatta and David Rico
- New The Business Value of Agile Software Methods by David Rico et al
- New Accelerate: The Science of Lean Software and DevOps: Building and Scaling High Performing Technology Organization by Dr. Nicole Forsgren, Jez Humble, and Gene Kim
Making Agile Work for You
If your agile transformation is not delivering the expected results or if you are doing agile and want to deliver more value to your customers and stakeholders, then come to one of my workshops Making Agile Work for You. In this workshop, you will experience agile practices for teams and stakeholders with advice on how to deploy them, and tips and tricks to become more agile and lean.
Missing a study or report on the business benefits of agile?
Have you investigated the business benefits of agile in your organizations or in the industry, or do you know additional studies or reports not listed above? Please sent me a link with a short motivation why you think it should be added to the list. Thanks!
This post is last updated on December 14, 2018.
Books
If you want to dive deeper into building business cases for improving software development then I suggest reading one or more of the books below.
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Hi, Can you advise of the benefits of Agile methodologies for a semiconductor industry
I find some of the approaches of the Agile very interesting, but not sure regarding the benefits for industries outside of the software development.
I’m not aware of a specific application of agile in the semiconductor industry, but I expect it to be there.
I’ve covered many areas where agile is used other than software development in Agile and Scrum beyond Software Development.
Hope this helps?