I hear the buzz about agile and scrum becoming more popular, but is there any data to support that notion? Are more employers looking for agile experience? Are people searching for agile and scrum resources on the internet? I decided to sit down and pull some numbers together for you. Most of them are very promising, and a few of them highlight trends that I did not expect.

1. Indeed.com Job Trends

One of the more popular job search sites is Indeed.com. Based on the latest comScore numbers, their Unique Visitor count has increased from 1 million in July 2006 to over 8 million in May 2009. They also offer trending on keywords from their job postings.

Job postings including the terms agile and scrum have grown 3,500% since July 2005.

That is impressive when you couple this with Indeed.com’s growth, however it makes up less than 0.2% of all job postings on their site.

Job postings including the terms agile, scrum, and microsoft project have grown 17,500% since July 2005.

Wait, what? I’ve never viewed Microsoft Project as the ideal tool to manage an agile implementation. Are these “not agile” and “scrumbut” implementations? Are employers simply sprinkling buzz words to gain views, or are they looking for people with both PMP and Scrum Master experience?

2. Google.com Search Trends

It’s no secret that Google is the most popular search engine on the web. According to comScore, Google Search Unique Views in July 2006 were 95 million. As of May 2009 Google Search is at a staggering 138 million Unique Visitors. Google has also rolled out a rarely publicized tool called Google Trends.

Users searching for the terms agile and scrum on Google since early 2005.

The Search Volume number is certainly going up and to the right, but who’s conducting these searches?

Users searching for the terms agile & scrum on Google since early 2005 by Region.

I can understand that India comes in at the #1 spot by a large margin, but I didn’t expect the United States to be #6. Are agile sources in higher demand overseas? Is this a terminology overlap between sports and technology?

What can we conclude from this high level analysis?

Well for one the terminology is certainly on an upward swing in both job listings and general online searches. Compare these numbers with the exponential growth of the entities hosting the trend data and it is quite impressive. I’ve also learned that it isn’t the U.S. leading the charge for online search volume on agile and scrum sources.

So while I continue to be optimistic about the adoption rate and popularity, I wonder if agile and scrum are staying true to form with their rise? Are they being thrown around generously with other terms like Web 2.0 and SaaS?