"...Even though in this type of setting the development teams are using what you might call agile methods, there's still a huge layer of requirements and review

"...Even though in this type of setting the development teams are using what you might call agile methods, there's still a huge layer of requirements and review and sign-off..." Aieeee! Brain explosion. If there's a huge layer of requirements, review, and sign-off, to the point that it's impacting value creation, then they're not using agile methods. Agile doesn't have a unique, firm definition. Best I can come up with is "best practices around iterative and incremental development" There's no best practice I know of that requires spending tens of billions in new IT infrastructure to service 350 million Americans with some fairly simple data needs. Sure, they may be using _some_ agile methods, like having nice chairs that have those cool ergonomic options, but they're missed the forest for the trees. Reminds me of the old joke "Aside from that, Mrs. Lincoln, how'd you like the play?" I found the article most uninformative. Nice example: "...These projects so big is that there is a very rigorous security oversight involved and layers of audit, layers of rules. The kind of thing that small start-up companies who are just winging it [don't deal with]..." No, lots of startups deal with high-security situations. These are known problems and have hundreds of existing players with known solutions. The real issue here is the way the environment for the work was structured, not the nature of the work itself. Such comments are misleading at best, duplicitous at worst. The problem here is that this is a reporter talking to some industry schmuck all too willing to make apologies for "that's just how things are" instead of actually answering the questions. Since the reporter doesn't know any better, there's no context or follow-up. My money says the reason there were problems is directly related to a large political system dividing up the spoils of new work and insulating itself from being blamed for any disasters. Since lots of folks made money, and nobody in particular is to blame for any of the issues, looks like the system performed as it should. The real lesson here for startups -- and it is an important one -- is that you can't use people to solve problems that are so far inside the existing system as to have created lots of excuses and barriers for why things have to be done a certain way. Identifying risk is fine, giving up and saying that there's no other way to accomplish things is not. The larger problem here is using reporters and MSM outlets to analyze how large groups of people perform complex tasks in nuanced environments. Most of the time they're the wrong tool for the job. They're great for telling stories, how one person perceives the way things are, but not so much at analysis. Most of the time what passes for analysis is simply an assemblage of stories, either on deep background or assembled piecemeal from phone interviews.