Comparative Results

Thank you for taking the Comparative Agility Survey. The following report, generated on Sep 14, 2010 compares the results of your 9 surveys against the 1812 surveys in the Comparative Agility database that meet the following conditions: User Specified IDs. This report contains two sets of results. The first results compare your set of responses against 1812 surveys in our database. The second results illustrate the characteristics of your set of responses only (i.e., average responses in your set and standard deviations of your responses). Each of these result types is described below.

In this section, your results are shown in terms of the number of standard deviations that your answers differ from the surveys in the Comparative Agility database. If your score differs by a positive number, then your answers for that dimension or characteristic are "better than" the average answers in the Comparative Agility database. If your score differs by a negative number, then your answers for that dimension or characteristic are "worse than" the average answers in the Comparative Agility database. The length of the bar for each dimension or characteristic represents the magnitude of the difference between your answer and the average answer in the database. More specifically, for each dimension and characteristic, the Comparative Agility website computes the average answer of all questions for the specific dimension or characteristic by examining the responses to all surveys (excluding your surveys). In addition, the website computes the standard deviation among all of the surveys for that dimension or characteristic. Finally, your answers are compared with the average answers and the difference between your answers and the average answers is then expressed in terms of the number of standard deviations. For example, if your combined answers (across all of your surveys) for a dimension average 3.5 and the database average (excluding your answers) is 3.0 with a standard deviation of 0.25, then you would see a bar with a length of +2 standard deviations, indicating for that dimension, your answers are two standard deviations more positive than the average of all the surveys in the Comparative Agility database. If you see an X on the zero line in the graph for a particular dimension or characteristic, that means that the average answer across your surveys was equal to the average answer in the Comparative Agility database (in other words, zero standard deviation difference). There are two graphs below. The first graph is for the seven Comparative Agility dimensions: Teamwork, Requirements, Planning, Technical practices, Quality, Culture, and Knowledge Creation. In this graph we take all of the questions related to the dimension (e.g., all of the teamwork questions) and we compute the statistics referenced above and then show how your answers compare to the Comparative Agility database of surveys. The second graph shows all of the characteristics. Each dimension is made up of three to six characteristics. As with the dimension graph, each result in the characteristics graph shows how you compare to the Comparative Agility database of surveys for all of the questions within a particular characteristic. By examining the Dimensions and Characteristics graphs, you can see how you compare to other organizations that have taken the survey.

Dimensions Analysis
-2
Teamwork Requirements Planning Technical Practices Quality Culture Knowledge-Creating

-1.5

-1

0.5

0.5

1.5

0.11 0.42 0.34 -0.22 -0.33 0.1 0.39

-2 -1.5 -1 0.5 0 0.5 1 1.5 2

Characteristics Analysis
-2
Teamwork Composition

-1.5

-1

0.5

0.5

1.5

Teamwork
Teamwork Management

0.35 -0.04 0.18 0.2 -0.08 0.51 0.34 0.38 0.46 0.36 0.36 0.29 0.52 0.35 -0.21 -0.42 -0.66

Teamwork
Focus

Teamwork
Communication

Teamwork
Team Member Location

Teamwork
Communication Focus

Requirements
Level of Detail

Requirements
Emergence

Requirements
Technical Design

Requirements
Planning Levels

Planning
Critical Variables

Planning
Progress Tracking

Planning
Sources of dates and estimates.

Planning
When do we plan?

Planning
Test-driven Development

Technical Practices
Pair Programming

Technical Practices
Refactoring

Technical Practices

Continuous Integration

Technical Practices
Coding Standards

0.17 -0.08

Technical Practices
Collective Code Ownership

Technical Practices
Automated unit testing

-0.53 -1.01 0.02 -0.13 0.4 0.09 0.09 -0.44 -0.83 0.58 0.33 0.31 0.62
-2 -1.5 -1 0.5 0 0.5 1 1.5 2

Quality
Customer acceptance tests

Quality
Timing

Quality
Management style

Culture
Response to stress

Culture
Customer involvement

Culture
Title and salary alignment

Culture
Infrastructure

Culture
People

Culture
Reflection

Knowledge-Creating
Timeboxes

Knowledge-Creating
Team learning

Knowledge-Creating

Stand-alone Survey Set Results

In this section, your survey results are analyzed stand-alone (meaning there is no comparison between your results and the database of other survey results). Rather, the combined results of your individual surveys are analyzed so you can see how "agile" your answers are on a scale of 1 to 5. In the graphs below, scoring a 5 would mean your answers indicate you are "most" agile and scoring a 1 would mean your answers indicate you are "least" agile. In each graph that follows, we calculate from your specific survey results the mean and standard deviation for each dimension and characteristic. Each dimension and characteristic mean is shown as a vertical black line on its respective bar. The position of the black mean line illustrates how agile the average answer for the corresponding dimension or characteristic is. The closer the mean line is to the right the more agile your answers are. Conversely, closer to the left side of the graph would indicate a less agile average answer for that dimension or characteristic. The colored bars in the graph represent the standard deviation of your answers to a dimension or characteristic. The key/legend below each graph maps the colors to -2 standard deviations, -1 standard deviations, +1 standard deviations, and +2 standard deviations. So, the bar just to the right of the black mean line indicates the range of survey answers that would fall within one positive standard deviation of your mean answer. The bar to the right of that (if it exists) indicates the range of survey answers that would fall between +1 and +2 standard deviations of your mean answer. The bars to the left of the mean line represent -1 and -2 standard deviations. Please note, any standard deviation bar that would extend lower than 1 or greater than 5 is truncated (you cant be lower than 1 or greater than 5 on a scale of 1 to 5). The width of the standard deviation bar illustrates the how closely spaced your survey answers are around your mean answer. If the standard deviation bars are small, then your answers to a specific dimension or characteristics are similar. If the bars are longer, then your answers are more variable. A "good" looking graph would be one where the mean line was far to the right and the bars around the mean line are very short (resulting in a lot of whitespace on the left side of each bar (meaning the -1 and -2 standard deviations do not extend very far to the left). Such a graph would indicate that your average answers to the dimension or characteristic were highly agile and there was little variation among the responses.

Dimensional Analysis of Your Data

Teamwork Requirements Planning Technical Practices Quality Culture Knowledge Creating 1 2 3 4 5

Characteristics Analysis of Your Data

Teamwork Questions

Teamwork Composition Teamwork Management Focus Communication Team Member Location 1 2 3 4 5

Requirements Questions

Communication Focus Level of Detail Emergence Technical Design 1 2 3 4 5

Planning Questions

Planning Levels Critical Variables Progress Tracking Sources of dates and estimates. When do we plan? 1 2 3 4 5

Technical Practices Questions

Test driven Development Pair Programming Refactoring Continuous Integration Coding Standards Collective Code Ownership 1 2 3 4 5

Quality Questions

Automated unit testing Customer acceptance tests Timing 1 2 3 4 5

Culture Questions

Management style Response to stress Customer involvement Title and salary alignment Infrastructure People 1 2 3 4 5

Knowledge-Creating Questions

Reflection Timeboxes Team learning 1 2 3 4 5

Summary
In summary, the two different sections of this report indicate how well your survey answers compare to other surverys in the Comparative Agility database and how agile your answers are on a stand-alone basis. Thank you for taking the time to complete the Comparative Agility Survey Kenny Rubin & Mike Cohn