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> I work in the public sector where we both develop and buy software ... Agile dies the moment contract negotiations begin There's a pretty famous public secto

> I work in the public sector where we both develop and buy software ... Agile dies the moment contract negotiations begin There's a pretty famous public sector counter example: the initial ObamaCare website. The initial site was contracted out using traditional waterfall development methodology and was a complete disaster. The rebuild was done with a far smaller team, at a far lower budget using agile methodologies. Things move pretty slowly in government, and I entirely understand that the existing government processes with big lump sum payments and rigorous accountability are not very conducive to agile development. However, it's not impossible (as with ObamaCare, it has been done before). The next time you have control over these negotiations, maybe push a bit harder for a more agile approach and see if it works.

BeetleB 7y ago
>There's a pretty famous public sector counter example: the initial ObamaCare website. It's not a counterexample. Just because this method failed doesn't mean agile would have been better. And GP wasn't saying that the alternative to agile is better. He was saying that in such environments, the key stakeholders do not agree with agile (regardless of what they claim). Their demands and actions demonstrate this. People will not provide money for funding without guarantees that agile says not to provide.
brandonb 7y ago
(I worked on the HealthCare.gov rescue team.) You have it right. We didn't explicitly follow the agile manifesto (or any other manifesto), but we did focus on shipping working software incrementally. There are successor organizations, like Nava and US Digital Service, that have encoded principals and playbooks: https://playbook.cio.gov/ https://playbook.cio.gov/