Agile Tour DC Chasing Windmills: Agile in the Government

Chasing Windmills?

Getting Agile Success in Government

Paul M. Boos

Which do we see?

Why should we care?

Transparency

Speed

Value

Why doesn’t

the Gov’t

use Agile?

Software Engineering

Understanding

Perceived Barriers

Challenges

Bureaucracy?

Gov’t Organizations

This model courtesy of Jurgen Appelo; please visit his blog at http://noop.nl

Tend to be here! (sheer size)

Policy?

Brings Order?

Gov’t Policies

This model courtesy of Jurgen Appelo; please visit his blog at http://noop.nl

Tend to be here! (in theory)

Complexity or Complication?

Complicated + ComplexOverrides Ordered + Simple

+ =Process Team Result

…

123

n Worse Case

Best Case

We’re lazy…?

Maybe Afraid?

Mistakes are not tolerated…

We don’t take time to read (or write) our policies…

We let others tell us what the policies mean…

Some basic magic…

Business Software is a Craft

It takes skill……and

Creativity

Grass Roots Motivation

Top Down Support

Agile Success

Strive to decomplicate…

This model courtesy of Jurgen Appelo; please visit his blog at http://noop.nl

Help teams operate as simple and ordered as possible.

Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.

-Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Apply the pants principle…Simple process adopted by the team doing the work.

+Process Team

“…reducing costs requires a better way to organize work, not better cost information.”

-H. Thomas Johnson (paraphrased)

Hesitate Δing for 1 problem

What about…

EA

VME

BE

DGU

PRAS

SDLC

T

Simplify

Simple Process = Easy Auditing

Focus on Delivering Business Value

Align Milestones w/Releasable Software

Systems Development Life-Cycle (SDLC)

Enterprise Architecture

Graft and Prune EA Components

The Iron Triangle Agilified

Est

imat

e

Scope

Budget

Work to…

Schedule

Scope

Budget Schedule

Prioritized EpicsEpic 1Epic 2Epic 3Epic 4Epic 5

…

Budget/Schedule + Mgmt Reserve

>

An Approach for Executing Projects w/Agility

Execute on small slices!

Classic EVM

Design

Analyze

Develop

Deploy$

010011011110100010010010

Scrum Process

Release

Release Plan

Release

$Scrum-based EVM

Personnel Annual Review System

Remove theblame cultureIt’s not the rebel alliance!

Advanced Wizardry

Clean the Windows!

Demand and Give Transparency

Retrospect

Experiment!

Set a vision…

and

help your teams see it!

There’s nothing to fear.

Paul Boos@paul_boos

boos.paul@epa.gov

http://coactivate.org/projects/agile-influencers-of-dc