1. Agile Practices Survey 2009
Scott W. Ambler
Michael Vizdos
Copyright 2009 Scott W. Ambler

2. Copyright 2009 Scott W. Ambler www.ambysoft.com/surveys/
How To Use These Slides
I have provided these slides, and the raw data behind them, so that others can use them in their own work.
You may reuse all, or a part of, this slide deck as long as you provide a clear reference to the source.
The suggested reference is: Results from Scott Ambler and Michael Vizdos’s July 2009 Agile Practices Survey posted at
Some slides have notes
Copyright 2009 Scott W. Ambler

3. Copyright 2009 Scott W. Ambler www.ambysoft.com/surveys/
About the Survey
July 2009
Message sent out to several agile Yahoo groups mailing lists (extremeprogramming, agilemodeling, agiledatabases, scrumdevelopment, testdrivendevelopment)
Data, summary, and slides downloadable from
123 respondents:
31% were developers, 48% were in management or leadership roles
43% had years IT experience, 29% had 21+ years
58% worked in North America, 21% in Europe, 12% in Asia Pacific
27% had 3-4 years of agile experience, 39% had 5 or more years
We had a wide range of people, nearly half were non-developers.
People had a fair bit of experience, many had 10+ years experience in IT
I wish there had been more respondents. The agile community is being over surveyed. See for some thoughts.
Copyright 2009 Scott W. Ambler

4. How many IT people were on your team?
The majority of agile development teams are still fairly small, as are traditional teams for that matter.
It’s interesting to see some large agile teams. At IBM we’ve got a fair number of teams in the 50+ range, and several teams in the hundreds of people.
Copyright 2009 Scott W. Ambler

5. Does your team have to comply to industry regulations?
Working in a regulatory environment can be very different than working in a non-regulatory one.
Regulatory is one of seven scaling factors, see
Copyright 2009 Scott W. Ambler

6. Does your team follow a CMMI compliant agile process?
A small number, but not insignificant, of agile teams are following a CMMI compliant process
Copyright 2009 Scott W. Ambler

7. How distributed were the IT people on your team?
This shows that it is pretty much a myth that agile teams are co-located. The fact is that the majority of agile teams have to deal with some form of geographical distribution.
Geographical distribution is also an agile scaling factor, see
Copyright 2009 Scott W. Ambler

8. Most Effective Practices Top 10 (out of 30)
Respondents could choose up to 7 practices out of 30
Scores indicate % of respondents who choose that practice
Copyright 2009 Scott W. Ambler

9. Practices Easiest to Learn Top 10 (out of 30)
Respondents could choose up to 7 practices out of 30
Scores indicate % of respondents who choose that practice
Copyright 2009 Scott W. Ambler

10. Practices Most Difficult to Learn Top 10 (out of 30)
Respondents could choose up to 7 practices out of 30
Scores indicate % of respondents who choose that practice
Copyright 2009 Scott W. Ambler

11. Practices Tried and Abandoned Top 8 (out of 30)
Respondents could choose up to 7 practices out of 30
53 out of 123 people skipped this question
Scores indicate % of respondents who choose that practice
There was a several practices with a 9% score, but I cut this chart off at 10%
Copyright 2009 Scott W. Ambler

12. Practices People Want to Adopt Top 10 (out of 30)
Respondents could choose up to 7 practices out of 30
Scores indicate % of respondents who choose that practice
Indicates practices that people want to adopt but haven’t done so yet
Copyright 2009 Scott W. Ambler