Event Delivering Agile in Government; Learning Commercial Sector Lessons

Keynote at Agile Business Conference 2011

Overview

IndigoBlue's James Yoxall and Jerrett Myers from the Institute for Government (IfG) will present the key findings of the IfG’s report into Government IT, Systems Failure, and discuss the pilot projects, the issues identified and the proposed solutions. The presentation will then consider the wider issues for Agile adoption in Government and look to the experiences of the commercial sector for answers. Themes will include: procurement and Agile contracts; big problems don’t necessarily demand big solutions; governance; and balancing the tension between Agility and control. The presentation will conclude with a look to the future: what comes next for Government IT; and what this means for the Agile community.

Agile Business Conference 2011

The theme for this year’s extended Agile Business Conference focuses on the maturity and acceptability of Agile – as evidenced by recent significant successes and developments across the Public and Private Sectors.

Rob Smith's conference preview - Delivering Agile in Governement:

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Highlights

Many organisations use Agile methods successfully on smaller projects, but these start to fail when project size increases or when multiple projects and programmes exist. The key issue in scaling Agile is ensuring that the correct governance principles are adopted and scaled as the use of Agile evolves. This hands-on session will discuss IndigoBlue’s tried and tested approach to governance: ADAPT and CONTROL. It will show how the techniques can be applied from the earliest stages of an agile adoption to provide early benefits and help achieve senior management support for the use of Agile.

IndigoBlue and the Institute for Government (IfG) will present the key findings of the IfG’s report into Government IT, Systems Failure, and discuss the pilot projects, the issues identified and the proposed solutions. The presentation will then consider the wider issues for Agile adoption in Government and look to the experiences of the commercial sector for answers. Themes will include: procurement and Agile contracts; big problems don’t necessarily demand big solutions; governance; and balancing the tension between Agility and control. The presentation will conclude with a look to the future: what comes next for Government IT; and what this means for the Agile community.

Working with a high level Taskforce, the Institute for Government explored the key challenges facing government as it spends around £16 bn on ICT each year. We concluded that in a fast paced world driven by rapidly changing technology, government ICT was struggling to get the basics right and falling further and further behind. This manifested itself in long procurement timescales, project delays, commercial and supplier problems, high costs of change, over customisation, a low user focus, and obsolete requirements. Our report, System Error recommended a new dual approach to government ICT that emphasises adaptability and flexibility in procurement and delivery while retaining the benefits of scale and collaboration across government.

We described these twin tracks as ‘agile’ and ‘platform’. Both these elements feature prominently in the Government’s ICT strategy, which promises that Government will “apply agile methods to procurement and delivery to reduce the risk of project failure” and introduce a “common ICT platform”. Implementing many of these changes will be extremely challenging. For example, the transition from a traditional method of project management to an agile approach requires a change of organisational culture and the acquisition of new skills as well as totally rethinking many of the traditional, linear procurement processes. This session will discuss the System Error report, the government’s ICT strategy and progress towards achieving a more agile approach in government ICT.

Traditional contracts are unsuited for development projects. They are based on defined process control with great emphasis placed on plans, requirements and estimates that are created at the start of the project. This assumes that development projects are predictable, but sadly they are not. There is a huge amount of complexity and uncertainty surrounding a development project, particularly in IT. This has only become worse in recent years as the pace of change increases and technology becomes more sophisticated and all-pervasive.

Instead, contracts for development projects need to use a different form of control, based on empirical control. Susan Atkinson at gallenalliance together with Gabrielle Benefield from the Scrum Foundation, and with input from some of the leading organisations and thought leaders in this space, have developed an Evolutionary Contract Model that is suitable for use with any agile methodology. The Evolutionary Contract Model draws upon the principles of Scrum, XP, DSDM Atern and Evo as well as Lean thinking.

Susan Atkinson's preview:

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