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2017 Agile Governance Survey Results

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How to Measure Anything 2nd Edition

This survey was performed during January 31 to February 17 2017 under the title February 2017 Agile Mini-survey. There was 180 respondents. The survey was advertised on Twitter (@scottwambler), on the LinkedIn Disciplined Agile Discussion forum, the Agile and Lean LinkedIn forum, and on the Ambysoft IT Surveys page.

The Survey Results

There are several interesting observations from this survey:

  1. The majority of agile teams are being governed in some way. As you can see in Figure 1, 78% of agile teams are being governed in some way, although only half of those are governed in a lean or agile manner.
  2. There is a range of approaches to governing agile teams. As you can see in Figure 2, only 4 out of 10 agile teams that are being governed are done so in a lean or agile manner.
  3. Agile teams should be governed in an agile manner. As you can see in Figure 3, traditional approaches to governing agile teams appear to backfire whereas agile approaches have positive benefits.

Figure 1. Governance rates for agile teams.
Agile Team Governance Rates


Figure 2. Governance approaches on agile teams.
Agile Team Governance Rates


Figure 3. Results of traditional and agile governance on agile teams.
Agile Team Governance Rates


Downloads

Survey

The Survey

 Survey Data File

Raw Data

 Survey Presentation

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. This survey suffers from the fundamental challenges faced by all 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. I think that it's a good thing to do and I invite others to do the same.