UK businesses will spend £37bn on failing agile projects
Businesses in the UK will waste £37 billion on failed agile IT projects in the next 12 months, according to a new report from 6point6. The report is based on a poll of 300 UK and US CIOs. They were asked about their experiences with agile, and how its principles are being applied and executed.
More than half of CIOs (53 percent) see agile development as "discredited," and three quarters (75 percent) don’t even want to defend it any more. Seventy-three percent of CIOs think agile IT is its own industry now, and 50 percent consider it an "IT fad."
Chris Porter, CTO and co-founder of 6point6 and one of the authors of the report says: "Agile IT in the UK is facing a hidden crisis -- 12 percent of Agile projects are failing completely. CIOs tell us they expect to undertake six agile projects next year, one in eight of which will fail completely. Given there are about 6,000 CIOs in the UK and that the average Agile IT projects costs approximately £8 million, that represents a huge amount of waste. The truth is that, despite the hype, Agile development doesn’t always work in practice."
6point6 has launched what it calls an agile agenda, as it looks to tackle the problem. According to it, CIOs should:
- Be ready to distribute agile
- Be ready to scale agile
- Be ready to transition
- Protect the CIO
- Bring back planning
- Bring back IT infrastructure
An Agile Agenda: How CIOs Can Navigate The Post-Agile Era report can be found on this link.
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