Agile security helps software teams deliver quicker and better software

Agile adoption improves key capabilities needed to respond to current business challenges, especially those resulting from the pandemic, according to Digital.ai.

With 60 percent of survey respondents saying Agile has helped increase speed to market, 41 percent agreeing they are better able to manage distributed teams, and 58 percent saying they have improved team productivity it is clear these practices are invaluable during these challenging times.

“Our all-in move to the cloud in recent years allowed us to go to fully virtualized in one day,” said Kim Gokce, Sr. Director IT Capabilities at The Coca-Cola Company. “Our people showcased their agility in immediately reorganizing the work. For me, it was a ‘burn the ships’ moment on our journey to agility.”

How the COVID-19 pandemic has affected Agile adoption

In mid-May 2020, a brief supplemental survey of respondents was conducted to learn more about how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected their Agile adoption. Supplemental findings reveal:

• 55 percent say their company plans to increase the use of Agile in the next 12-14 months. This is an increase of 13 percent over the original survey completed just five months ago.
• 43 percent of organizations say their momentum for Agile adoption has increased over the past 90 days, with 15 percent saying it has increased significantly.
• 33 percent say they increased or expanded Agile adoption in the last 90 days to help manage distributed teams.

Other notable findings from the report, completed in December 2019, include:

• Risk and compliance continue to trend upward, as the value of identifying and measuring technical risk prior to deployment increased by 54 percent and the importance of automated audit compliance and governance across control points increased by 10 percent over last year.
• A significant shift in Agile techniques occurred, as product road-mapping increased nine percent while release planning decreased 11 percent. Drivers for this change may include a general increase in continuous integration/continuous deployment and better-defined program increment planning.
• The Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) continues to be the most popular scaling method cited by respondents, increasing 5 percent over last year and outpacing the number two choice, Scrum@Scale, by 19 percent.

Larger companies more likely to practice Agile

For the first time, the survey results were filtered along demographic lines to reveal insights beyond the general results. The analysis indicated a correlation between length of time practicing Agile, improved time to market, and the ability to manage changing priorities.

The survey indicated that companies with more than 20,000 people were more likely to be practicing Agile for at least five years. While companies with less than 1,000 people continue to mature quickly and are increasingly embracing a broader view of business agility by applying Agile principles to areas of the business outside development, IT, and operations.