How to measure the ROI of agile projects

Calculating the return on investment (ROI) of a project would seem to be a straightforward thing to do – you take the income or profit from the project, whether actual or projected, and divide it by the costs. But some project management experts go further than that.

Agile projects is an approach which is broken down into more manageable sections and helps determine the overall value throughout the project, in addition to traditional methods which calculate financial gain at the end.

Dr David Rico, an agile technical leader who has handled almost $2bn worth of agile projects – including for the US government – carried out a meta study in 2009 of 29 projects. Rico found that the ROI for agile methods was four times more expensive than traditional methods, but two times lower than inexpensive ones, making it tricky to determine the best agile and traditional methods. 

Read more on how to measure the ROI of agile projects.