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Proponents of Agile and lean software development methodologies say they are becoming more popular than traditional sequential methods in corporate app-dev groups, but implementation of a pure Agile method is still a rarity in the enterprise.

The agile movement, as most readers know, was founded in response to the perceived need for an approach to software development that could easily accommodate change. It was designed in opposition to the so-called waterfall model, which favored an extensive design cycle that imposed fairly unchanging requirements and designs. It often delivered products to customers that were out of sync with the users' needs due to the evolution of those needs during the development period.

Forty-four percent of software development projects use some kind of agile techniques, according to Scott Ambler, IBM’s practice leader for agile development. That’s occurring in organizations where development is distributed, in regulatory environments, and in places using CMMI to measure the effectiveness of their development processes.

Agile, the methodology and the movement remains a work in progress. For certain, the movement is more organized since the writing of the Agile Manifesto in 2001, with organizations like the Agile Alliance and the Scrum Alliance. And large, veteran enterprises such as IBM are having success with agile software development.

Forget the waterfall approach -- Agile is the way to go, but it still requires governance.

Lean development is the latest methodology to be debated by the Agile software development community. Patterned after Lean manufacturing, Lean development involves constant performance measurement in an endless pursuit of improvement and waste elimination through value stream analysis.