Research Exploring The Current State of Software Practices

I have been performing survey-based research pertaining to various issues within the IT community. I’ve made the data available to others so that they can evaluate it, and hopefully share their findings, with others.  In fact, this site was an early adopter of “open data” strategies. I also have some advice to share about surveying the agile community.

Currently Active Surveys

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Agile Research Results

• Scrum Certification: 2010
• Agile Adoption Rate: 2006
• Agile Adoption Rate: 2007
• Agile Adoption Rate: 2008
• Agile Adoption: 2014
• Agile Cadences and Technical Debt: 2015 – Explores issues such as sprint/iteration length, release cadences, and how teams are(n’t) addressing technical debt.
• Agile Certification Survey Results (Ambysoft, April 2009)
• Agile and Enterprise Architecture 2011 (Ambysoft, March 2011)
• Agile Governance Survey Results (SAA, February 2017): Explores the impact of agile and traditional governance approaches on agile teams.
• Agile Outsourcing (March 2013 Agile State of the Art survey) (Ambysoft March-April 2013)
• Agile Planning 2012:Explores adoption rates and effectiveness of agile planning practices such as initial release planning, iteration planning, look-ahead planning, and daily coordination meetings. (Ambysoft, January 2012)
• Agile Practices and Principles Survey Results (Ambysoft, July 2008)
• Agile Practices Survey Results (Ambysoft, July 2009)
• Agile Project Initiation 2009 (Ambysoft, August 2009)
• Agile Project Initiation 2013 (SA+A, July 2013)
• Agile Project Success Rates (Ambysoft, April 2010)
• Agile Project Types: Identifies the types of projects agile techniques are applied on, and if so are organizations succeeding at doing so (Ambysoft, June 2011)
• Agile Readiness 2017 (SAA, May 2017): Explores whether areas within an organization are agile and whether they are focused on process improvement)
• Agile State of the Art November 2010 Survey: Focus on transition/release phase but also training, mentoring, and project funding
• Agile State of the Art November 2011 Survey: Focus on accelerators and impediments to agile adoption, including team size and geographic distribution
• Agile Teams: Q2 2011 – Focus is on team size, geographic distribution, and communication strategies with stakeholders (Ambysoft, April/May 2011)
• Agile Teams: Q4 2011 – Questions exploring position name of the project lead and what non-agile groups agile teams work with (Ambysoft, October 2011)
• Agile Testing Survey 2012: Questions exploring the application of both agile and traditional testing and quality strategies on agile teams (Ambysoft, November 2012)
• Agility at Scale: 2009 – Also some interesting results about why some organizations still aren’t adopting agile strategies
• Agility at Scale: 2011
• Agility at Scale: 2012 – Explores the success and failure rates for different scaling/tailoring factors
• Agility at Scale: 2016 – Explores whether organizations are scaling agile tactically (looks into team size, distribution, compliance, and complexity)
• How Agile Are You? 2010 (Ambysoft July 2010)
• How Agile Are You? 2013 (Ambysoft January 2013)
• 2008 Test Driven Development Survey Results (Ambysoft, October 2008)
• 2014 Test Driven Development Survey Results (SA+A, May 2014)

Data Quality and Data Management Research Results

• Current State of Data Management (DDJ, July 2006)
• Current State of Data Quality Techniques (DDJ, September 2006)
• Data-Developer Relations (DDJ, September 2009): Also some interesting results about documentation and onboarding
• 2013 Data Warehousing (DW)/Business Intelligence (BI) (SA+A, December 2013): Explores success rates, effectiveness of results, and challenges faced.
• 2016 Current State of Data Quality (SA+A, June 2016)
• 2018 Current State of Data Quality (DAC, June 2018)

IT Research Results

• 2007 IT Project Success Rates Survey Results (DDJ, August 2007)
• 2008 IT Project Success Rates Survey Results (DDJ, December 2008)
• 2010 IT Project Success Rates Survey Results (DDJ, May/June 2010)
• 2011 IT Project Success Rates Survey Results (DDJ, October 2011)
• 2013 IT Project Success Rates Survey Results (DDJ, December 2013)
• 2018 IT Project Success Rates Survey Results (DAC, February 2018)
• 2018 State of Software Development Survey Results (DAC, December 2018)
• 2014 Software Development at Scale Survey Results (DDJ, Spring 2014)
• Enterprise Architecture Survey Results (DDJ, January 2010)
• IT Governance and Project Management Survey Results (DDJ, July 2009)
• IT Project Success Rates by Paradigm and Team Size (DDJ, July 2010)
• Modeling and Documentation Survey Results (DDJ, July 2008)
• Modeling and Documentation Mini-Survey Results (SA+A, October 2013)
• Process Framework Survey Results (DDJ, January 2008)
• Project Management Practices for Staying Out of Trouble (DDJ, December 2010)
• Stakeholder Relationship Survey (DDJ, May 2011)
• Technical Debt Survey (PMI, November 2021) – Result summary only, no data or slide deck

Miscellaneous Research Results

• Remote Work (PMI, May 2021) – Result summary only, no data or slide deck