Cutter recently conducted a survey of than 100 software development organizations to study how companies deal with maintenance and other software support issues. The survey, which was analyzed by Senior Consultant E.M (Elli) Bennatan, covered a broad range of organizations: 45% with fewer than 25 developers, 23% with between 25 and 100, and 32% with more than 100 developers (of those, 18% have more than 400). The survey also covered a fair mix of both small and larger projects: at 59% of surveyed companies, projects are typically small — fewer than 5 person-years; at 35%, they are between 5 and 20 person-years (of those, at 11%, they are between 11 and 20), while the remaining 6% typically have larger projects that are more than 20 person-years (of those, at 4%, they are more than 40).
An impressive majority of the software development organizations (77%) reported that they have adopted agile methods, at least for some of their projects. And according to the data, most of these organizations (53%) found that agile-developed software is easier to support due to frequent product releases and customer involvement during development. Of the organizations reporting agile has an impact on support, 46% report that customer involvement during agile development leads to higher customer satisfaction. More details, and Elli’s comments, are here.
