Standish Chaos Report 2021
When it comes to technology projects, Agile projects succeed where traditional projects fail. It’s really that simple. In fact, the most recent Standish Group Chaos Study from 2020 shows that Agile Projects are 3X more likely to succeed than Waterfall projects. And Waterfall projects are 2X more likely to fail.
To be clear, the failure and success metrics shared in this article are based on software projects only. I don’t know about success and failure rates for other types of projects.
Oddly not everyone agrees even when talking about technology or software projects. In particular the project management community decried the value of agile ways of working. Only recently have they embraced their own version of agility and even now they still like to claim that traditional approaches have their place in technology projects. Unwilling to let go, they promote the alchemy of hybrid agile, whatever that is.
[See this related article:Project Managers Fail to Help Software Projects Succeed]
But the PM community aside, most people are on board that all that upfront planning and plan-driven approaches are going to fail on fast-paced technology initiatives. There is plenty of supporting evidence that Agile wins out over Waterfall Projects.
That data comes from 25 years of studying project success and failure rates is pretty clear. Agile projects are 2X more likely to succeed and less than half as likely to fail than Waterfall. This is based on the Standish Group Chaos Studies and their most recent report in 2020 called Beyond Infinity. As with the other Standish Group Chaos reports, they reside behind a paywall on the Standish Group Website.
