IT-Stakeholder Relationship: Results from the May 2011 DDJ State of the IT Union Survey

This survey was performed during the months of May and early June 2011 and there was 248 respondents. The survey was announced in my April DDJ newsletter, Survey Shows Unethical Behavior Rampant inside IT Development Teams, and in my DDJ blog. The survey results Downloads What you may do with the information Discussion of the results Links to other articles/surveys Why share this much information?

The Survey Results

The survey results are summarized in The Fine Art of Ignoring Stakeholders.

Some findings include:

• Figure 1 explores how software development define their stakeholders. There's definitely room for improvement IMHO.
• Figure 2 reveals adoption rates of various requirements elicitation techniques. These results are inline with previous surveys which explored modeling and documentation strategies and agile project initiation strategies.
• Figure 3 summarizes the types of requirements artifacts being generated by software development teams.

Figure 1. Who do software development teams consider to be stakeholders?

Figure 2. How do teams elicit requirements?

Figure 3. What types of requirements artifacts are being created?

Downloads

The Survey Questions

Raw Data

Summary Presentation

What You May Do With This Information

You may use this data as you see fit, but may not sell it in whole or in part. You may publish summaries of the findings, but if you do so you must reference the survey accordingly (include the name and the URL to this page). Feel free to contact me with questions. Better yet, if you publish, please let me know so I can link to your work.

Discussion of the Results

1. People didn't know the purpose of the survey, so that likely removed some bias. My strategy for the DDJ surveys is to send out a short survey every two months entitled "State of the IT Union, DATE" but to not indicate what the topic of the survey actually is (other than an IT topic of course).
2. This survey suffers from the fundamental challenges faced by all surveys.

Links to Other Articles/Surveys

1. My other surveys

Why Share This Much Information?

I'm sharing the results, and in particular the source data, of my surveys for several reasons:

1. Other people can do a much better job of analysis than I can. If they publish online, I am more than happy to include links to their articles/papers.
2. Once I've published my column summarizing the data in DDJ, I really don't have any reason not to share the information.
3. Too many traditionalists out there like to use the "where's the proof" question as an excuse not to adopt agile techniques. By providing some evidence that a wide range of organizations seem to be adopting these techniques maybe we can get them to rethink things a bit.
4. I think that it's a good thing to do and I invite others to do the same.