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I would say that Agile processes is definitely a part of solution (and I have been part of Agile teams and implemented Agile processes within the government), e

I would say that Agile processes is definitely a part of solution (and I have been part of Agile teams and implemented Agile processes within the government), especially because of the oversight it can allow.

exelius 12y ago
It can allow more oversight; but that oversight comes at the expense of efficiency. It can be manageable if the organization is relatively flat, but that's almost never the case in government. What eventually happens is that to give oversight to the decision makers on a sufficiently large project, your dev leads spend all day in status update meetings with scrum masters, who spend all day in status update meetings with project managers, who spend all day in status update meetings with directors and functional leads. Decisions are made a level above that, so you've got 5 levels of management in a big game of telephone. It's still probably better than the alternative, but Agile doesn't give you the certainty around schedule and budget that waterfall does. There's a mindset in the government that often manages around schedule and budget ONLY; so it will take rooting out several generations of government project managers to really start to crack the problem. Like I said, I don't envy the guy. But his bar for success is so low that it would be hard not to improve things.
devonkim 12y ago
"Agile" is very popular for upcoming next gen tech projects in the intelligence community partly because budgets are so erratic and progress is much more scrutinized than before (sequester may be over technically but you wouldn't think so if you look for job listings in the DC area). The problem is that even that process is not unaffected by the waterfall and spiral externalities of who these projects must ultimately answer to and (much more importantly) receive headcount and budget from to accomplish a goal. I'm familiar with one project where iterations / sprints took about 2 months each. Comparing this to the precedent of top 50 enterprise size orgs taking half a year to deploy one... or one thousand physical servers due to sheer bureaucracy in the name of checks and balances... well we should not be trying to compare ourselves to the worst to just make ourselves feel better. It's not like low morale is the primary reason for low performance in enterprise work for so long.

exelius 12y ago

It can allow more oversight; but that oversight comes at the expense of efficiency. It can be manageable if the organization is relatively flat, but that's almost never the case in government. What eventually happens is that to give oversight to the decision makers on a sufficiently large project, your dev leads spend all day in status update meetings with scrum masters, who spend all day in status update meetings with project managers, who spend all day in status update meetings with directors and functional leads. Decisions are made a level above that, so you've got 5 levels of management in a big game of telephone. It's still probably better than the alternative, but Agile doesn't give you the certainty around schedule and budget that waterfall does. There's a mindset in the government that often manages around schedule and budget ONLY; so it will take rooting out several generations of government project managers to really start to crack the problem. Like I said, I don't envy the guy. But his bar for success is so low that it would be hard not to improve things.

devonkim 12y ago

"Agile" is very popular for upcoming next gen tech projects in the intelligence community partly because budgets are so erratic and progress is much more scrutinized than before (sequester may be over technically but you wouldn't think so if you look for job listings in the DC area). The problem is that even that process is not unaffected by the waterfall and spiral externalities of who these projects must ultimately answer to and (much more importantly) receive headcount and budget from to accomplish a goal. I'm familiar with one project where iterations / sprints took about 2 months each. Comparing this to the precedent of top 50 enterprise size orgs taking half a year to deploy one... or one thousand physical servers due to sheer bureaucracy in the name of checks and balances... well we should not be trying to compare ourselves to the worst to just make ourselves feel better. It's not like low morale is the primary reason for low performance in enterprise work for so long.