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[INFOGRAPHIC] Agile development methodology poses risk to talent strategies

Increasingly, Yoh is being asked to help identify talent that will perform on our clients’ agile development methodology teams. This demand has allowed us to experience firsthand the challenges that arise when a company is looking to quickly and cost effectively source well qualified agile talent into their established SCRUM team or other agile development methodology. The challenge?  The methodology is in high demand, growing nearly every day, and well qualified talent that can immediately address the most pressing needs of our clients is becoming not only harder to find, but harder to recruit.

Because it is our goal to help our clients achieve workforce certainty by eliminating the doubts, disruptions and risks related to the management and scarcity of skilled workers, we take the reality of such talent supply and demand issues seriously. To better understand the landscape of the agile talent supply and demand, we partnered with CareerBuilder to conduct some detailed research.  The results are fairly shocking. Below is a summary of those results in an infographic.  The full study and detailed report of the agile talent study can be found here.

(Content is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. Based on a work at www.agiletalentstudy.com.)

The reality of the talent shortage must be seriously taken into consideration when building out teams to execute agile development methodologies.  The risk in poor talent planning could have serious impact on the organizations ability not only to execute the immediate needs of the latest agile project, but also the long term ability of the company to position itself as a well established player in agile practices .

Consider these 5 take-aways from the report:

  • Agile demand is nearly 5x greater than supply: For just about every five job openings requiring agile development methodology skills there is but a single well qualified candidate able to fill that role.

  • The Pacific Northwest and NYC Metro is toughest:  The talent supply squeeze is greatest in major metropolitan areas across both the pacific northwest (from Palo Alto to Seattle) as well as the New York City metro.

  • Big employers are competing for talent:  Some of the countries largest and cash rich organizations are competing for agile talent, IBM, AMAZON, and Microsoft for instance.  This fact coupled with tight inevitably yields to rapid wage increase.

  • An experienced group:  The agile talent community is an experienced one, averaging over six years of hands on experience developing in agile development methodology environments.

  • Top talent gets top dollars:  The 90th percentile of agile talent is averaging about $160K in salary annually.  This does not take into account likely bonuses for this group.







If you are using agile talent development methodologies or considering them, it would behoove you to have a realistic and aggressive recruiting and sourcing strategy in place.  If you are a professional who possesses agile development methodology skills, be patient with your career choice, you are in the drivers seat.









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