2008-08-04 17:35:11 - Rally Software's in-depth Agile Impact Report measures real-life performance of Agile development projects against their traditional counterparts

TORONTO and BOULDER, Colo., August 4, 2008 - Development teams utilizing Agile practices were on average 37 percent faster delivering their software to market and increased their teams' productivity by 16 percent, according to a new study that was commissioned by Rally Software and conducted by QSM Associates (QSMA). Titled 'The Agile Impact Report: Proven Performance Metrics from the Agile

Enterprise,' the report also concluded that Agile teams were able to maintain normal defect counts despite significant schedule compression.

Rally Software commissioned independent research firm QSM Associates (QSMA) to execute the study, which included data collected from May through July 2008. The study measured the real-life performance of 26 Agile development projects against plan-based or waterfall industry averages in three key areas: productivity, time-to-market and defects.

'It is becoming clear that Agile practices have a very positive and demonstrable impact on software development teams across the enterprise,' said Michael Mah, managing partner of QSM Associates. 'I expect to see these already impressive results improve as these teams continue to scale Agile across their organizations and further progress along the Agile maturity curve.'

Time-to-market
Larger software development teams, especially when geographically dispersed, often struggle to deliver their software on time. By adopting Agile practices, companies measured in this study were able to produce large-scale enterprise software in four to eleven months, compared to the six to thirteen months a typical organization required to deliver comparable software. Overall, Agile companies experience an average increase in speed of 37 percent. Rally customers who participated in the study saw an average increase of 50 percent in their time-to-market when compared to the industry average.

Productivity
In order to objectively measure the efficiency that is achieved in building a software product, QSMA utilizes a Productivity Index (PI). A number of elements contribute to an organization's PI including: tooling and methods, technical difficulty, personnel profiles, and integration issues. Because it is based on numerous contributing and personnel elements, productivity is often the most difficult measure for organizations to improve. Additionally, metrics for large, globally distributed teams often trend towards lower productivity due to time and distance among teams.

On average, the Agile projects measured in the Agile Impact Report experienced a 16 percent increase in their teams' productivity - a significant increase given the different variables included in the PI measurement. Rally companies on average saw a 25 percent increase in their teams' productivity compared to the industry average.

Defects
QSMA's prior research shows that bug counts rise geometrically as schedules are compressed. Typically, 'haste makes waste'; when large teams cut delivery schedules to four or five months as the measured teams did, defects will conservatively exceed industry averages by about four times. Instead, the measured projects in the Agile Impact Report experienced total defect counts that were significantly better than would be expected under these conditions. In fact, despite cutting schedules by more than 50 percent, results show the defect counts for the measured projects remained mostly steady. Two Rally customers maintained average defect counts, and two customers were on the upper end of industry averages when compared to similar sized projects taking more than twice as long to deliver.

The measured projects included in the Agile Impact Report represent a variety of industries and project sizes ranging from 60 to over 1,000 Agile practitioners. Five Rally customers - including Accuro Healthcare Solutions Inc., BMC Software, CNET (cnet.com) and HomeAway Inc. - contributed data for eight Agile development projects and provided additional information for in-depth case studies. Rally's goal for commissioning the study was to provide software-driven organizations with an accurate benchmark for measuring the performance of Agile development projects across the enterprise - measurements the company felt the software industry was lacking.

'Current data on the Agile development industry often fall short of examining the true impact of Agile practices on improving a company's performance,' said Tim Miller, Rally's CEO. 'We wanted to go beyond ten minute surveys that describe adoption rates or estimate project improvements. Large software organizations need proven metrics - measured in real-world projects like their own - that accurately demonstrate how Agile development projects compare against plan-based or waterfall projects. This study shows compelling evidence that companies using Agile practices experience significant improvements in speed, productivity and quality.'

Study Methodology and Availability
QSMA used its SLIM (Software Lifecycle Management) suite of benchmarking, software estimation and modeling tools to obtain objective data and benchmark Agile development projects against QSMA's large, heterogeneous database. The SLIM-Metrics database represents over 7,500 projects across 500 organizations in 18 countries and adds between 200 and 400 projects per year. QSMA conducted the 'Agile in Action' study starting in May through July 2008.

Further detailed results and in-depth case studies of five participating companies are included in the full version of the Agile Impact Report. To download a free copy, visit www.rallydev.com/downloads/.

About Rally
Rally is the #1 partner for Agile success through its family of products, coaching and community support. With a dedicated focus on Agile practices, Rally helps organizations of all sizes shorten their development cycles, increase quality, and collaborate across teams and departments. Rally's on-demand Agile lifecycle management products were honored with three consecutive Jolt Product Excellence Awards (the industry's Oscars) in 2006, 2007 and 2008 and currently support over 900 corporate customers, 20,000 projects and 35,000 users in 50 countries. Rally's end-to-end solutions for Agile development also include Agile University, the largest source for Agile training, and Agile Commons, the largest collaborative Web 2.0 community dedicated to advancing software agility. For more information, visit www.rallydev.com.

About QSMA
QSM Associates, Inc. helps organizations measure, plan, estimate and control software projects. We offer the SLIM (Software Lifecycle Management) Suite of tools, so managers can benchmark and forecast Agile, waterfall, in-house, and offshore/multi-shore software projects. SLIM contains statistics from a worldwide database of more than 7,400 completed projects, enabling productivity benchmarking on the desktop.

Using SLIM to dynamically run 'virtual project simulations," companies routinely model and forecast waterfall and Agile releases to deliver on time, within budget with > 90% estimation accuracy. SLIM can also derive ROI achieved by Agile methods and other process improvements. QSMA offers consulting, training, and coaching to help accelerate this capability.

QSM and SLIM are registered trademarks of Quantitative Software Management.