is agile the prescription for the public sector’s it woes?

IS AGILE THE PRESCRIPTION FOR THE PUBLIC SECTOR’S IT WOES?

NOVEMBER 13TH, 2014

PAYSON HALL, PMPCONSULTING PROJECT MANAGERCATALYSIS GROUP, [email protected]

WHO AM I?

• 1st Computer game 1975

• Professional IT career 1980

• Software start-up 1982-1986

• BS Computer Science 1986

• Systems Integrator 1986-1991

• Independent IT & PM consultant since 1991

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IT PROJECTS ARE HARD

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PUBLIC SECTOR IT PROJECTS ARE HARDER STILL

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“The government is inefficient by design, burdened with a deliberate set of checks and balances…”

- A New Approach for Delivering Information Technology Capabilities in the Department of Defense (November 2010)

WHAT ARE SOME OF THE CHALLENGES PECULIAR TO PUBLIC SECTOR IT?

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THE PUBLIC IS A TOUGH BOSS

• Poorly informed about complexity & risk of large information technology projects

• Wary of perceived waste and abuse

• Goaded by sometimes sensational media and politicians to be intolerant of failure/mistakes

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A REQUIREMENTS PROBLEM?

0

250

500

750

1000

Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec

760780800820840860880900920940960980

24022020018016014012010080604020

REQUIREMENTS RATE OF CHANGE 2% PER MONTH?

Changed Original

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CURRENT APPROACH ISN’T GETTING US THERE…

• Requirements flawed - procurement and control processes assume otherwise

• Procurement makes unrealistic assumptions (vendors play along)

• High procurement investment makes termination unpalatable (excessive vendor leverage)

• Extreme risk aversion (leads to > Risk)

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WHAT NEXT?

1.Embark on significant organizational and cultural change that will require time, resources, hard work and may involve mistakes; or

2.Look for a cheap, fast, and easy “silver bullet”

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AGILITY TO THE RESCUE!

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WHAT IS “AGILE”?

• Agile Manifesto - 2001

• A group of iterative SW development processes that explore requirements concurrent with building & delivering functionality incrementally and often

• Characterized by

• Co-located, self-organizing, cross-functional teams

• Daily & ongoing customer involvement/participation

• Some specific development practices (Kanban, Scrum, storyboards, backlogs, time-boxed sprints, velocity metrics…)

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THE AGILE FRONTIER

Project Size

Agile Penetration

SMALL

LARGE

IT ONLY BEYOND IT

Larger IT ProjectsAgile IT Practices

Larger IT/Non-IT ProjectsAgile Pervasive beyond IT

Small IT ProjectsAgile IT Practices

Small non-IT ProjectsAgile Approach beyond IT 2004

2009

2014

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WHERE AGILE EXPERTS AGREE

• Agile practices have demonstrated value in some contexts

• The Agile buzz justified some practices that we knew were good ideas anyway

• The Agile label was sometimes misapplied by rookies and charlatans to justify sloppy practice

• Effective Agile implementation requires significant organizational change (beyond IT)

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AGILE IN THE PUBLIC SECTOR?

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THE PUBLIC SECTOR’S CURRENT APPROACH TO LARGE IT PROJECTS IS NOT CONDUCIVE TO AN AGILE APPROACH

Agile Public Sector

Trusting Suspicious

Embraces Failure (That Teaches) Punishes Failure

Assumes Requirements Fluid Pretends Requirements Fixed

Acknowledges Uncertainty Assumes Certainty

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BRIDGING THE GAP

Agile

Public Sector IT16

PREPARING FOR AGILE CULTURALLY

• Set clearer expectations about inherent difficulties & risks of large complex public sector IT projects

• Eliminate perceived economies of scale that encourage one huge system vs five medium

• Rethink Public Sector IT procurement for the 21st century (time and materials vs fixed price)

• Look at performance based management rather than relying solely on cost and schedule metrics

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NEAR TERM AGILE OPPORTUNITIES

• Internal development of small modular systems that don’t need a systems integrator (assumes investment in training/coaching to grow internal capability)

• Contracts that don’t pay directly for systems development, but reward performance (example: fraction of fees collected)

• Time and material contracts

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CONCLUSION• We have challenges delivering large IT projects, particularly in

the public sector

• Agile has growing successful track record in some contexts

• The public sector needs some successful Agile experiments

• Embracing Agile development for large projects in the public sector will require cultural and regulatory changes

• As citizens, developers & project managers we must support those changes and find opportunities for Agile experiments

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

• Johanna Rothman, Ken Pugh, Halim Dunsky, Jim Highsmith, Naomi Caietti reviewed the talk and helped me cull the worst of it

• Hat tip: Lance Williams for the Capitol image

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THE LAST SLIDE

• Q & A• Questions Later?

Payson [email protected]

Twitter: @paysonhall

Thank you!

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