Page 30 - FCW, July 15, 2016

DrillDown
Government projects
are not agile enough
A leading proponent of scrum methodology argues that even partial adoption will pay dividends at federal agencies
BY DAVE WEST
In the timeless words of Yogi Berra, “When you come to a fork in the road, take it.” Federal IT managers know all too well the challenge of going down two paths. Two of the biggest have been the mandates to migrate to the cloud and to better secure government IT systems through continuous moni- toring.
Agile is increasingly the standard way software development organi- zations deliver software. In a recent survey by TechBeacon, two-thirds of organizations said they are using “pure agile” or “leaning toward agile.”
For the majority of government proj- ects, however, agile is still a dream, and waterfall methodology continues to be used, with large amounts of process governance and control.
That lack of agility is highlighted in high-profile failures such as the Uni- versal Credit project in the United Kingdom and the disastrous launch of HealthCare.gov in the United States. Agile alone would not have solved many of the problems that plagued those projects, but it would have made them more visible, there- by enabling the right decisions to be made earlier.
Government seems to be a place where agile would not only help but is truly necessary. Consider that:
For the majority of government projects, however, agile is still a dream, and waterfall methodology continues to be used, with large amounts of process governance and control.
30 July 15, 2016 FCW.COM
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