After over 12 years of leading Forrester’s research on agile and, from 2011, publishing a biennial Forrester report on the global state of agile adoption, we have just published The State Of Agile Development, 2025: It’s Still Relevant, With Benefits And Challenges. In this blog, I am just quickly highlighting some of the key takeaways to hopefully motivate you to go and read the full report if you are a Forrester client. So let’s go …
Agile — The Disputed Champion Of Modern Business, Still Going Strong
In times when everything changes so quickly and artificial intelligence, especially generative AI (genAI), captures the imagination of tech enthusiasts and professionals alike, one technology that remains a foundational pillar of the tech industry is agile. Consider the narrative of a tech startup navigating the tumultuous waters of market demands and rapid innovation. At their core, agile methodologies enable this team to remain adaptable, collaborative, and efficient. Drop that team in an enterprise and multiply the team by 10, and what happens? Can those 10 teams still strive together in the same way as the tech startup team? Well, yes and no.
But the new report reveals a striking insight: Despite the buzz around agile’s supposed decline, a commanding 95% of professionals affirm its critical relevance to their operations. This statistic, coupled with the 58% of business and technology professionals prioritizing agile adoption, paints a clear picture: Agile is not just surviving; it’s still thriving and not going away, yet it does need improvement.
Agile’s Journey And Collaboration Is A Testament To Resilience
Agile’s resilience is underscored by its widespread and enduring adoption across many organizations. In fact, a significant majority, 61%, report deploying agile practices for over five years, demonstrating a strong enduring commitment to its principles over older methodologies such as waterfall, which continues to see a decline. This dedication to agile reflects a broader industry trend toward valuing collaboration and flexibility over rigid hierarchies and siloed organizations. Agile teams, characterized by diverse roles including developers, testers, and scrum masters, embody this shift toward a more inclusive and dynamic approach to product development. Our survey data also proves that organizations could achieve even greater success by fully embracing agile’s collaborative ethos, values, and principles and investing in the leadership necessary to guide this cultural shift. Leaders have to do more than just commit to agile; they must lead the change!
Agile Leadership Requires Foresight And Emerging Tech Adoption
Despite agile’s proven benefits, the data shows that organizations face challenges in scaling agile practices and fostering a culture conducive to its adoption. Proficiency levels among teams vary, with only 7% achieving full proficiency for great agile practices but quite a higher number just being average or good, indicating room for more improvement. Overcoming these hurdles requires a strategic blend of agile frameworks tailored to each organization’s unique needs, coupled also with a commitment to modernizing all angles of the organization with continuous learning and adaptation. Businesses are not immune to that change, and there is quite more to do there.
Moreover, the integration of agile with emerging technologies like generative AI and TuringBots offers a promising avenue for enhancing agile’s impact even further. TuringBots, AI, and genAI-infused tools not only streamline routine tasks but also provide valuable insights that can refine sprint planning and project prioritization. With nearly half of the respondents already leveraging genAI in their agile practices, the future of agile seems destined to be intertwined with technological advancements, driving innovation and efficiency in software development.
Agile Remains An Unshakable Foundation
As the tech world continues to evolve at a breakneck pace, agile values, principles, and practices stand as testament to the enduring need for adaptability, collaboration, transparency, and speed. Agile’s widespread adoption and the challenges it faces reflect an approach that is not static but dynamic, one that clients need to continuously evolve and adapt to meet the demands of an ever-changing industry landscape. Will the integration of agile and AI technologies herald a new era of software development, one where efficiency, innovation, and quality are paramount? I hope it will.
As organizations navigate the complexities of digital transformation, agile remains an unshakable foundation, guiding teams toward success in the age of AI and beyond. Over the years, our research has also shown that client organizations cannot make this transition alone — you need valuable partners to work with you. This is why I see the strong connection of this research with my recently published Forrester Wave™ evaluation of modern application development services, of which agile services are mandatory table stakes.
Read the full report to access more data and understand our thinking behind it. Also, reach out to me (dlogiudice@forrester.com) or schedule an inquiry or a guidance session to get help — I’m here to assist you. I also want to thank my great senior research associate, Merve Kandemir, for her dedication to this research and amazing work to get it published.