As we've discussed before, Agile adoption swelled in the last one or two years, diving into the mainstream of how businesses build and deliver value to customers. (You can definitely say that Agile is mainstream if there's more than a one-third chance that, in your next job in a development team, you'll be following Agile practices.) At a time when the public perception of companies has taken a brutal beating, that outcome is a genuine compliment to many businesses.

When the economic storm clouds gathered, companies might have battened down the hatches, sticking to the most tried-and-true ways of doing business. The recession might have been the strongest argument against disruptive changes, once the economic margin of error became a lot smaller. A business process as critical as product development might have been the last thing anyone wanted to tinker with.

Therefore, Agile presented just the kind of disruptive change that organizations might have avoided. It doesn't work unless organizations embrace new values and procedures. These changes ripple throughout the organization, especially in the technology industry, where the technology is the business, not just a business accelerator. Every team must figure out how to chart its own Agile course, usually leading to an idiosyncratic mix of Agile and non-Agile methods. None of these changes will be easy.

The dramatic rise in Agile adoption meant that companies looked these realities in the face and said, "We need to make this kind of transformation, not in spite of the recession, but because of it." Rather than steering clear of the unknown, these organizations saw Agile as an adaptive way to navigate uncharted economic waters during and after the recession. For those of you who made this gutsy move, give yourself a well-deserved pat on the back.