Our friends at VersionOne have been kind enough to share their market research survey results with the community. Robert Holler started this online survey in June and it ran until August with over 700 people responding*.

I personally think there are two remarkable results in this survey. (1) The average length of time a company had been using agile was only 1.9 years, (2) when asked who instigated agile in your organization, 28% responded that it was a VP or Director, and when you add in the numbers for Project Manager and CEO the total adds up to 50%. We often assume that agile is a grass roots movement instigated by developers. It would appear that as agile has crossed the chasm in to mainstream adoption, the people driving adoption have changed. The message is clear, if you are in the business of selling tools, services, consulting or training to the agile community then you need to be targeting managers.

Additionally, these results are very encouraging for the future of the Agile Project Leadership Network that I helped to start. The APLN should grow rapidly and remain healthy as there is clearly a strong pool of pro-agile managers emerging. If you are one of those managers, reading this and looking for advice on managing agile projects, then I'd recommend that you join the APLN and get involved in a local chapter. If you don't have one then form one.

*Correction. Thanks to Paul Culling at VersionOne. Technorati tag: Agile, David+Anderson, VersionOne, Robert+Holler