Hot on the heels of the requirements survey (which is still available, if you haven't participated), we've launched the Agile adoption survey. Colleague Dave West and I are looking into the state of Agile adoption, looking for answers to commonly-asked questions like...

• What aspects of Agile are getting stronger or weaker adoption?
• How important are tools, coaching, and other aids?
• How important is the flavor of Agile you select?
• What types of organizations or projects seem to have the best chances of success with Agile?

If your organization is at any point in the Agile adoption curve, from an initial evaluation to a fully mature implementation, we'd love to hear how's it going. Here's the link that will take you straight to the survey.

Many thanks to Israel Gat at The Agile Executive for posting my thoughts on how Agile is following the same path that many revolutions take. After you've had some initial successes, and take your new programme seriously, what now?

While the actual document about Agile usage in the technology industry slowly but majestically navigates through the final editing and production process, I thought I'd share an important bit of data that didn't make it into the report. Shown in the diagram below is the percentage of survey participants who said that they used particular Agile methodologies. We also asked the respondents about other methodologies that often come up in discussions of Agile, either as complementary approaches (for example, Lean), or as points of comparison (Waterfall being the most obvious one).

How many at each table in the Agile seating chart?
As you can tell, there's no clear winner here, other than Scrum, which overshadows every other Agile methodology in adoption. There's another way to look at the same picture: whenever there's a family photo of Agile methodologies, the participants almost always make sure to invite their poor cousins to attend. There are both good and bad sides to that earnestly ecumenical approach.

Speaking of social media, one of the two research documents now in the editing queue looks at using social media as a source of product requirements. Using Forrester's POST* methodology as a starting point, how can product managers harness the enormous amount of potentially useful information transmitted in the clear through blogs, forums, Wikis, and similar technologies?

The other document in editing is the "Agile company" piece, covering the results of the survey and interviews we conducted to understand how Agile development changes technology companies. To foreshadow the results, I had to divide Agile adoption into two stages. To date, Agile aficianados have focused on the first, Agile within the development team. Clearly, for the story of Agile adoption, that's only Chapter One.

* In this approach, the steps for analyzing social media involve people, objectives, strategy, and technology (POST).

[Cross-posted at The Heretech.]