Software development industry insiders report increasing outsourcing, multi-sourcing, and project management improvement trends. Software development organizations are growing, while agile and CMMI are noted as preferred methodologies.

The ExecutiveBrief 2009 Software Development Trends Survey was conducted in April through June of 2009. This survey is intended to inform senior business leaders and industry professionals of common and prevailing trends along with key priorities reported among their peers throughout the spectrum of the software development industry.

Over 6,000 top software industry business leaders and software development professionals were provided with this survey, consisting of a detailed series of key questions, the majority of which were multiple choice with options for alternate inputs, plus two specific questions which were in an open-ended essay format, those latter two garnering direct input on key industry concerns and most valuable developments.

This year’s findings were very insightful, of which a sampling of some of the key highlights are as follows:

• The areas of greatest need for improvement within most software development organizations are in the Project Management area as well as most of the major elements of the up-front Design/Scope Phase.
• Agile is King. CMMI is the preferred maturity model.
• Software as a Service was common in almost half of the respondents.
• Green computing is still more hype than reality.
• Two-thirds of organizations use outsourcing, one-third do not.
• Of those who do outsource, two-thirds of them multi-source, one-third does not.
• Despite the global economic downturn, most software organizations are growing, in terms of both personnel and budgets.

We invite you in this issue to dig into the details of this important and timely resource. It’s sure to give you a fresh perspective on where the software industry is headed, what’s important to it, what’s not, where the problems are, and where the most hopeful innovations and development’s can be found.