Project Performance with Agile Development

Question

I remember reading an article stating that someone had measured project performance under Agile (or maybe just TDD?) and found that it accomplished projects more efficiently than its alternatives. Does anyone know where I can find that, or a similar article?

Answer 1

There are some interesting studies cited in Wikipedia's pair programming article. Whether this supports your case depends on what you mean by 'more efficient'. In general, the studies suggest a pair produces better quality work, and may be slightly faster than one developer working alone. However, because there is no work happening on a second project, the overall rate of development is lower. In other words, you are trading off initial development time for more robust design, lower defect rate, knowledge transfer, less goofing off, etc.

Answer 2

take a look at statistics from applying Scrum in MySpace teams - http://www.rapidscrum.com/shock.php

Answer 3

Here are some interesting papers:

• Realizing quality improvement through test driven development: results and experiences of four industrial teams
• Evaluating the Efficacy of Test-Driven Development: Industrial Case Studies
• Yahoo! Agile transformation case study
• SirsiDynix Case Study: Jeff Sutherland on Highly Productive Distributed Scrum (paper available here)
• Towards Enhancement in the Traditional Processes Upshots by the Implication of Scrum Process
• Some data also in the The Scrum Papers

I tend to be a bit skeptical when I see terms like "hyper-productivity", and not all teams can reach the level of productivity shown in some of the above studies. But since you asked for some performance measurements, here are some data.

Answer 4

Hoping to gain project efficiency is the wrong reason to "Go Agile"

If you are considering changing to agile methodologies in order to make your project development more efficient, you're going to be disappointed. Agile transformations require non-trivial lead time for the team to learn and customize processes. Also, it will take some number of sprints before you can have any realistic sense of the team's velocity.

Even a team that is performing agile development well may or may not be any more efficient than a team using more traditional methodologies. More likely benefits from agile approaches are are:

• lower defect rates (as @ire_and_curses mentioned)
• more predictable delivery planning
• building something that is closer to what the customer needs

Answer 5

I have to be honest with you. I am dying to do TDD... but I haven't being able to even scratch the surface. And it's not only me, the entire team (50+ developers) doesn't even discuss about it.

Last week I attended the p&p symposium at Redmond. I had a chat with Scott Hanselman on the topic. He was fanatically absolutely certain that ANY project can apply TDD. "Uncle Bob" in his presentation also fanatically mentioned that TDD is THE ONLY way to go.

I like testing. I believe in testing at all levels. But writing first the test and later the code... the green-red switching with cycles that last like 2 minutes?

I haven't being able to do that. Do you feel the same?