- Introduction
- Stage 1: Development Projects Are Unsuccessful
- Stage 2: Developers and Customers Grow Apart
- Stage 3: Agile Process (or Almost Anything, Really) Becomes Attractive
- Incremental Agile Implementation
Stage 1: Development Projects Are Unsuccessful
Most software development projects are unsuccessful. In 1994, a whopping 84% of all software development projects in the United States failed to deliver the value that was desired by their customers. Either they never delivered any software or the software was no longer relevant to the business problem when it was delivered. By 2000 this had dropped to only 72% failing to deliver desired valuehardly a cause for celebration. (See The Chaos Report, Standish Group, 1994, updated in 2000.)
With this track record, I would think that everyone would be clamoring for change, for something new. This isn't the case. People are reluctant to adopt anything new and dysfunctional relationships persist.