Agile Study Confirms Benefits

  Agile   Manufacturing   ProjectsAtWork  

An ongoing study is exploring the impact of agile development practices on productivity, cost and quality. Early results are exceeding expectations and bode well for adopters of Agile methods.

A first-of-its-kind study analyzing the Agile development practices of one programming community — in this case, Columbus, Ohio — reveals a level of achievement that far exceeded expectations of both the analysts and the participants.The study, being conducted by software productivity researchers QSM Associates in tandem with the Central Ohio Agile Association (COHAA), bodes well for adopters of Agile software development.

Despite some initial concerns by a few participants on how they might fare on industry comparisons, "the defect data were significantly better than industry averages," according to Michael Mah, managing partner of QSM Associates. Most installations expect an improvement in schedule when adopting new technologies like Agile, said Mah, "but the improvement in quality was striking."

Early results from the Columbus-area participants show that a typical business system comprising 50,000 lines of code is completed 31% faster than the industry average in the QSM industry database of completed projects (4.4 months vs. 6.4 industry average). Even more remarkable, said Mah, is the defect rate, which is 4x better than the …

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