Hello folks,

The 12^th Annual State of Agile Report has just been released by VersionOne. The report found that SAFe maintains its top position in ‘Scaling Methods and Approaches,’ with nearly one-third (29%) of respondents saying that SAFe is the method they “follow most closely.” But we’re even more pleased that the report validates our current and future path.

The report noted that 75% of respondents said that accelerating software delivery was the reason they were adopting Agile. That’s up from 69% last year and is the top reason given. But the report also said that “one of the most notable changes from last year’s survey is the importance of Customer/User Satisfaction in measuring success.” This was the top success measure for both Agile initiatives and Agile projects, at 57% and 46%, respectively.

Taking these two findings together, VersionOne concludes, “With the recognized necessity of accelerating the speed of delivery of high-quality software, and the emphasis on customer satisfaction, it’s no surprise that 71% of the survey respondents report that a DevOps initiative is underway or planned for the next 12 months.”

SAFe recognized the importance of DevOps early on as a key enabler of the Framework’s Continuous Delivery Pipeline. And, just recently, we’ve introduced a new two-day course—SAFe DevOps with SAFe DevOps Practitioner (SDP) certification—to help the SAFe community improve delivery pipelines.

Here’s another interesting report finding; when it comes to what’s really needed to improve an organization’s DevOps practice, respondents said the two most important capabilities are the “Ability to measure cycle time, wait time, bottlenecks of business value flowing through delivery cycle” and “End-to-end traceability from business initiative through development, test and deployment.” That helps define what we call Value Stream Mapping and is a core concept in our approach to implementing DevOps.

Be sure to download your own copy of The 12^th Annual State of Agile Report for many more interesting findings.

Stay SAFe –

Dean