12.4 Recent Trends in Agile Project Management

Organizations, whether multinational corporations, non-profits, government agencies, or international organizations, often use agile project methods and frameworks. Although agile started with software development projects (see Section 12.1), its utilization has become common in other IT projects. Eventually, non-IT projects, such as new product development projects, have practiced agile methods increasingly. A PMI (Project Management Institute) survey conducted in 2018 found that 23% of organizations worldwide utilized agile techniques, whereas 47% used a predictive approach. However, another 23% also used hybrid approaches (e.g., using waterfall’s sequential and linear project life cycle stages while establishing a more frequent communication and feedback system with the client and stakeholders)^[1].

A recent study is the 17th State of Agile Report published in 2024^[2]. 788 people from various countries who work in the tech sector, financial services, healthcare or pharmaceuticals, professional services, and government responded to that survey. This report highlights the points from the practice as detailed below:

• 71% use Agile in their software development lifecycle (SDLC).
• 63% of Agile users are team Scrum.
• The top benefits of using Agile are improved collaboration and better alignment with the business.
• Engineering/R&D are the fastest growing adopters of Agile, up 16% over 2022.
• The top five parts of the organization using Agile are information technology, the software development and delivery lifecycle team, engineering, product, research and development, business operations, and customer support and services.
• The top five factors driving agile adoption are “Prioritize, deliver, and measure incremental customer and business value,” “Accelerate time to market,” “Digital transformation,” “Delivery predictability,” and “Better managing distributed teams.”
• The top answers for “Where Agile Struggles” are “Company still has many legacy systems requiring mixed approach,” “Siloed teams causing delays on deliverables,” “Clashes with company culture,” “It is not used consistently across teams,” and “Cannot measure the value to the business.”
• The top four software programs agile teams utilize are Atlassian Jira, Mural/Miro, Azure DevOps, and Microsoft Excel.
• Regarding the AI (Artificial Intelligence) use in the agile world, 29% of the respondents indicated that they are actively exploring these types of AI tools and how best to use them in parts of the organization and/or they are designing/embedding/integrating them into their products and services. 22% said, “Some individuals in our organization are using or testing them, but there are no specific plans or goals yet.” while 17% indicated, “We plan to use them in our organization and/or products, but we are still in initial discussions or investigations.”

The “15th State of Agile Report” conducted in 2021 by digital.ai^[3] also had useful insights to understand the agile project environment better.

• The most popular agile approach is Scrum. 66% of the respondents identified Scrum as the methodology they follow most closely. Besides, 9% indicated using ScrumBan, and 6% blended Scrum with XP. Therefore, Scrum’s share is 81% in total.
• The most popular scaling approach is SAFe, which has 37%. SAFe was followed by Scrum@Scale / Scrum of Scrums (9%) and Enterprise Scrum (6%).
• The top five agile techniques and practices used by the organizations are daily standups (87%), retrospectives (83%), sprint/iteration planning (83%), sprint/iteration reviews (81%), and short iterations (63%).
• The top five agile planning and delivery tools are Kanban boards (77%), taskboards (67%), spreadsheets (66%), agile project management tools (64%), and bug trackers (62%).
• The top five reasons to adopt agile are “enhance ability to manage changing priorities”, “accelerate software delivery”, “increase team productivity”, “improve business and IT alignment”, and “enhance software quality”.
• The top five challenges in organizations regarding agile practices are “inconsistent processes and practices across teams”, “organizational culture at odds with agile values”, “general organization resistance to change”, “lack of skills/experience with agile methods”, and “not enough leadership participation”.
• Eighty-one percent of the respondents recommended Jira as a software tool in agile planning and management. Jira was followed by Digital.ai agility (formerly VersionOne) and Azure DevOps. Thirty-five percent recommended Microsoft Project.