Posts Tagged indeed

Agile Salary Trends

Finding accurate salary data can be a somewhat daunting task, especially when dealing with anything Agile related. Recruiters sprinkle Agile terminology throughout online job postings with reckless abandon, however you can still sort through the noise to find useful Agile salary data. You only need to know where to begin.

Luckily for us, Indeed.com has opened up it’s salary data to the public.

Indeed Salary Search is based on an index of salary information extracted from over 50 million job postings from thousands of unique sources over the last 12 months. Many job descriptions don’t contain salary information, but there are enough that do to produce statistically significant median salaries for millions of keyword, job title and location combinations – in fact, most job searches you are likely to think of. As new jobs are added each day, the Indeed Salary Search index is automatically updated with fresh salary data, so the salary results are as up-to-date as they could possibly be.

Agile Project Manager & Scrum Master Salaries
Agile Project Manager & Scrum Master Salaries
At a glance there is an $11,000.00 gap between an Agile Project Manager and a Scrum Master, however I believe there is a good deal of overlap between these roles. Many employers have been pairing up the Scrum Master duties with Project Manager responsibilities even though they tend to be at odds with one another. From my experience playing Scrum Master & Project Manager in the past, these salary numbers are fairly close. I also find it interesting that Scrum Master data has remained quite steady in a fluctuating economy since Feb 09.

Agile Developer & Agile Tester Salaries
Agile Developer & Agile Tester Salaries
The 11% gap between Agile Project Manager & Scrum Master seems meager compared to this 47% gap between Agile Developers & Agile Testers. It seems that employers still undervalue testing regardless of the SDLC framework. For some reason the Agile Tester data cuts off around June 09, but you’ll notice correlations between the two roles. Agile Developer & Tester salaries seem to have taken more of an immediate hit than Agile Project Managers & Scrum Masters when the economy tanked in Fall of 08.

So what can we take away from all of this data?

I recommend using it to supplement other Agile Salary Surveys from companies like VersionOne & ASPE. Don’t let the job market get you down, and just because Agile is a relatively new framework, it doesn’t mean you’ll necessarily make less money pursuing it.

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Agile and Scrum Trend Analysis

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.

Indeed Agile Scrum Trend

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.

Indeed Agile Scrum MS Project Trend

Wait, what? I’ve never viewed Microsoft Project as the ideal tool to manage an agile implementation. Are these “not agile” and “scrum butt” 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.

Google Agile Scrum Search Trend

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.

Google Agile Scrum Search Trend 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?

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