# Initial Coin Offerings and Agile Practices
## 5 Analysis of Agile ICOs Projects
### Roadmap and ICO State  
As we said in section Data Analysis, a team describes, usually in the white paper, the roadmap of activities after the crowdfounding, and outlines the actions which they aim to achieve during the product development. Generally, this description is a simple graphical overview of the project's goals and deliverables, and of the related timeline. Investors look the roadmap to know when and how the business idea will be operative and profitable, to understand the development phases of the product. We chose to identify the starting-point of a roadmap as the time when the ICO crowfounding closes, and  
Figure 4: Histogram of the percentage of the Hard Cap per ICO to be reached to consider the ICO as a success. Figure 5: Histogram of the percentage of the Hard Cap per Agile ICO to be reached to consider the Agile ICO as a success. the team gathers the money needed to develop the product. In the subset of 55 Agile ICOs, only 9 ICOs don't provide a roadmap. In the remaining 46 ICOs the roadmap is also called milestone, timeline or highlights. In these, the time period that roadmaps cover, ranges from few month to over five years, as shown in Figure 6 and summarized in the following:  
* only 18 ICOs present a roadmap longer than one year;
* the longest roadmap extends 72 months after the end of the ICO;
* the average duration of roadmaps is 16 months after the ICO end;
* in 2 cases, the roadmap is concluded with the closing of the ICO. We define the time of post-ico state as the number of months passed after the ICO period. Figure 7 shows the distribution of the state of ICOs in terms of number of months passed after the end of the ICO selling phase. The roadmaps therefore concern the future of the ICO and provide a realistic plan on the use of the funds in view of the objectives set. The content of the roadmap helps investors to understand when and how they are involved in the project, and provides them a view on possible changes. A too detailed roadmap is typical of the plan-driven methodologies and contradicts one of the fundamental principles of Agile methodologies, that aim to respond to change more than to follow a predetermined plan [41]. In a roadmap developed with an Agile approach, the possible difficulties that the team can meet and the way to deal within possible obstacles should be taken into consideration. A roadmap developed with an Agile approach should therefore be compared not only to the future features of a project, that is difficult to accurately detail and predict, but should also show the daily work and progress of the team, with a special focus on feedback and opinions of the people involved. The roadmap is therefore an useful tool to promote the transparency of development, also in order to manage customer expectations. Focusing on specific features diverts attention from the general vision of the project. An Agile roadmap is therefore able to embrace the inevitable changes, to communicate a short-term plan, but it must also include a flexibility that allows this plan to be adjusted to the customer's value or changes imposed by the market. According to [42; 43] we define below some guidelines that characterize a roadmap designed with an Agile approach. * The roadmap must be oriented towards objectives much more than towards the features be developed, so that everyone involved can understand the evolution of the product. Figure 6: Histogram of the number of months of development described in the Agile ICO roadmaps. * The creation of Agile roadmaps requires continuous communication within the team, and with investors. It also needs to harness the effort of all the parts involved. * In an ICO, it is essential to respond adequately to the needs of investors. Responding promptly to customers' needs through continuous dialogue is one of the essential characteristics of the Agile approach. The roadmap should therefore take into account all investors' feedback for possible improvements. The new ideas, evaluated through a score, must be included in a future release backlog.