brian wernham - part 2 of talk to bcs on 5 february 2013 - part 2 - agile government - uk vs us...

7/29/2019 Brian Wernham - Part 2 of Talk to BCS on 5 February 2013 - Part 2 - Agile Government - UK vs US Experiences

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Two talks presented to the British Computer Society

on February 5, 2013

at the Davidson Building, London

Talk 2Talk 2Talk 2Talk 2::::

AgileAgileAgileAgile GovernmentGovernmentGovernmentGovernment on both sides of the Atlanticon both sides of the Atlanticon both sides of the Atlanticon both sides of the Atlantic::::

TheTheTheThe StStStStory So farory So farory So farory So far

Brian WernhamBrian WernhamBrian WernhamBrian Wernham FBCS FAPMFBCS FAPMFBCS FAPMFBCS FAPM

Brian Wernham 2013 CC BY-NC-ND


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Moving towards Agile

Government

Brian Wernham FBCS FAPM

Author and Consultant

Welcome back!

In my first talk, before the break, I stressed

the need for moving beyond:

belief in the Agile approach

to having proof of the Agile approach.

More than ten years on from the signing of

the Agile Manifesto, we are seeing more than

just an interest in Agile from leaders in

Government, we have had clear statements of

intent. Both the US and the UK governments

have said that they want to be more Agile.

BUT:

What assurance is there thatproblems on individual, high-profile

government projects do not set back

the whole Agile agenda?

Can the US and UK Governmentslearn from each others successes and

mistakes in the adoption of Agile?

Could both the private and publicsectors adopt Agile at a larger scale,

faster if we had more research

evidence from Government available

to us?

There have only been incomplete attempts to

survey the progress of the adoption of Agile in

government on both sides of the Atlantic. A

torrent of reports have been issued in the last

two years, but their conclusions are tentative.

The general consensus is that although

targets for a move to Agile are broadly set,

specific targets and robust measurement are

needed.

And, there has been little analysis as to

whether the targets are achievable.

So - here are the key questions this second

talk will attempt to answer:

How are UK anHow are UK anHow are UK anHow are UK and US Governmentsd US Governmentsd US Governmentsd US Governments

adopting Agile?adopting Agile?adopting Agile?adopting Agile?

Are the ambitious targets being achieved?

Here are the four points I will discuss for

both the UK and US:

Firstly - some background: what isdriving the need for new approaches

in each country?

Secondly - What do the respective ITstrategies promise?

Thirdly - What actions are underway? And fourthly - I will assess the

current status of Agile adoption

Agile Government in the UK

New National Audit Office Report on Agile in

the UK Government

The old headquarters of Imperial Airways in

Buckingham Palace Road used to be the hub

for air travel for the London elite.


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In its early days, one was whisked away on a

sea plane from the river Thames, and flew to

Southampton to board a luxury P&O steamer

to travel to other major cities such as New

York, and to exotic destinations in the Orient.

Glamorous tea dances used to be held in the

basement of the Imperial Airways building.

Refreshments were consumed mainly in the

form of bracing 'salty-dog' and martini

cocktails whilst passengers waited for their

flights.

Of course, the butler would have gone ahead

on a train from nearby Victoria station with

the heavy baggage and would have all one's

clothes ironed, and hanging in the port side

cabin ready for departure.

How things have changed. The National Audit

Office (NAO) has moved in from its old, grimy

'good enough for public servants'

accommodation into the building, now

refurbished with a no-nonsense 'fit for

purpose' office environment, complete with

bright lighting, hot desks for flexible

working, modern IT, and video conferencing

facilities. That basement ballroom is now a

modern staff gymnasium and exercise studio.

As well as refurbishing their offices, the NAO

has 'refurbished' its IT skills.

Internal expertise has been strengthened, andnow there is now a reduced reliance on

external skills for checking IT projects.

Part of this capacity building has been in

developing an approach to auditing

government technology projects that are

claiming to be 'agile' in approach.

Earlier last year the NAO ICT and Systems

Analysis Team published a report on how the

private sector is using 'agile project

management'.

In October the same team issued a follow-up

report, focused this time on providing a

'snapshot' of the use of Agile Project

Management in the 17 central UK

Government departments.

The new report aims to identify elements of

agile practices that are being used in central

government departments, rather than analyse

VFM.


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It is expressly NOT intended to analyse

whether agile is 'Value for Money' - VFM.

Such VFM reports from the NAO are larger,

and usually focus on one project.

This is just a warm-up for analytical VFMreports on Government technology projects

which will, undoubtedly, follow in due

course. Some of these projects will be using

(or at least claiming to be using) agile project

management.

The report lays out five "characteristics for

agile delivery".

Citizens and business at the heart ofdelivery

Service or business change isdelivered quickly and continuously

improved

Full service is built from smallindependently usable releases

Team is responsible for makingdecisions rapidly

Team continually redirects resourcesto maximize the value it delivers

The report breaks down these five

characteristics into lists of typical agile

"behaviours and actions". These are based on

what the NAO team observed in some existing

agile projects in government that they

inspected. These checklists will be an

important input into the NAO's future

consideration in evaluating successes and

failures in government technology projects.

What is interesting in the report is that only

one central Government department, the

Cabinet Office has significant Agile

experience to share in all five key 'Areas of

Agile'.

Only 4 other central government

departments have any Agile experience:

Department for Transport and itsAgencies

Department of Energy and ClimateChange

Department of Health Government Digital Service (as part

of the Cabinet Office)

The NAO report found no significant Agile

experience in any of the other 12 central

government departments.

The report also found no specific targets for

Agile success, mechanisms for measuring or

evaluating success, or plans for rolling it out.

There are three key lessons to be learned

from the report:

Firstly: the drive for Agile was often 'bottom-

up', from programmers, rather than from

senior management.

Secondly: barriers to Agile are mainly

cultural - large projects are seen as too

difficult for Agile. So, how will Agile be rolled

out for use in at least 50% of all large,

mission-critical government programs by this

April this year?

The difficulty of incremental release (say

weekly, or even monthly) into operational use

is also perceived as the main barrier on

mainstream systems. Operational releases of

changes of government mainframe systems

are typically on a half-yearly, or at best

quarterly basis at large delivery departments

such as DWP (pensions and benefits) and

HMRC (personal and corporate taxes).


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Thirdly: Plans for moving forward are unclear

- once people had used Agile, they rarely

wanted to go back to the old ways of working,

but that there was no consensus up to

October last year as to what the next step

should be.

The final part of the report outlines 12 case

studies, and for 11 of these a description is

given of the "Measures of Success" that the

NAO perceive as applicable in each case.

There are 5 "Measures of Success":

Agile Adoption Measures: For example, at the

Health & Social Care Information Centre. It

assesses how 'Agile' each project it is running

really is, and how effective the project

governance arrangements are. For example,

an assessment is made as to whether

development is really test-driven and how

much testing really takes place within each

development iteration.

Cost reduction: For example, at the

Department for Energy and Climate Change

(DECC) which measures whether Agile

reduces delivery timescales and costs.

Process improvement. For example, the

ability to track progress with more

granularity at user story level by the Cabinet

Office on its Electoral Registration project.

They stress the importance of weekly show

and tell sessions. At Companies House, the

adoption of Agile has improved morale and

reduced staff turnover.

Increased Output: At the Department for

Transport defect rates have fallen from 30%

to 5% due to the adoption of Agile.

Business Effectiveness: The most important,

but perhaps the most difficult measure of

project effectiveness. At the Office of the

Public Guardian - clear, business orientated

targets have been agreed, such as fewer errors

in the registration for powers of attorney and

a reduction in the cost per transaction. But

most other organizations just state the need

for compliance to project business cases - justin terms of satisficing the stated objectives of

time, cost and quality, without an attempt to

show whether Agile has really made a

difference.

But we still wait for an audit that

categorically measures whether the Agile

approach is really being used everywhere it is

claimed in government, and more than

anecdotal proof of its the business.

In the UK there is now a clear plan. A few

months ago in November, the Cabinet Office

announced a Digital Strategy - a timetable to

move, and move quickly, to 'Digital, by

Default'.

The aim is for the UK government to deliver

everything online that can be delivered

online.

How can the ambitious targets beachieved?

The Cabinet Office expects one infour government transactions to

become digital by 2017"Figure 10:

Digital take-up curve, averaged across

case study data"

(Slide - Digital Graph)

Then there is an 'inflexion point' - amajor acceleration - over half of the


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remaining transactions are expected

to be digitized in just three years

How can the Government involvemore medium sized companies in the

supply chain? Are Government

Departments ready to manage sub-

contractors more directly?

The spend on smaller technologycontracts is expected to more than

double

The next step, announced just before

Christmas, is the set-up of a Digital

Procurement Framework to spend up to one

hundred million pounds.

This comprises a mega-contract between the

Cabinet Office and one supplier, called the

Neutral Vendor.

This Neutral Vendor will not be allowed to bid

for Agile development, instead it will act as an

honest broker, pre-vetting Large, Medium

and Small organisations, and even freelances.

By June this year the company running this

Neutral Vendor will be acting as a dating

agency - introducing suppliers on the list to

Government bodies as and when projects are

kicked-off.

We already know which projects are in the

pipeline.

The Cabinet Office have identified 674

government transactions that could be

digitised. Of these, about 250 are major

transactions, and 25 have been prioritised tobe developed using Agile - as exemplar

projects.

These projects are expected to cost one

hundred million pounds over the next two

years, and will be built using suppliers

approved by the Neutral Vendor.

Will this accelerate the use of Agile in the UK

Government?

Lets wait and see.

Agile Government in the USA

The US government has had its fair share of

IT technology disasters. For example, the

failure of a huge project that tried to

integrate the personnel systems for the US

Army, Air force and Navy. In 2010, the project

was cancelled, after 10 years and 800 & 50

million dollars thrown away.

One of the problems is that so many

regulations have built up over the years.

These try to improve technical development

in diverse Federal government bodies, but

often they have just ended up stiflingeffectiveness.

A good example of how regulation has not

improved project management is the series of

regulations created over the years by the US

Department of Defense. For example, to try

and improve project management the DoD

published the infamous 2167 standard. This

was widely interpreted as mandating a

waterfall approach. The department thentried to stress that modular development and

incremental delivery was the preferred

approach - they issued the 2167A standard.

But waterfall projects continued unabated.

Efforts were made to sweep up all the

regulations under one all-encompassing

umbrella standard, DOD498.

IT disasters continued to plague the

department. All that was being produced, was

the creation of a Mirage of control by


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standards.

So-Congress got involved. The Clinger-Cohen

Act of 1996 begat the 5000 series of

regulations and the enforced use of Earned

Value Analysis. These were intended toencourage incremental, evolutionary

development. But an inflexible approach to

project management was the actual result.

What the DOD had now, was the creation of a

Mirage of control by legislation - a real

flexibility killer!

The story is broadly similar in technology

projects across all US public bodies. Each

major project failure results in moreregulations - more audit - and more

centralised standards. These mirages of

apparent control over projects in the US have

just increased the management apparatus

surrounding each development team -

smothering rather than helping.

In 2008, when Barack Obama put together

his team to prepare for his transition into

office, he appointed a 34 year-old geek as histechnology advisor.

Vivek Kundra proposed a very different

approach to running technology projects.

Previously, there was little central oversight

of IT - there was an "Administrator for E-

Government", but the position was little

more than a placeholder.

He convinced the president elect that a

powerful executive role was needed - and that

he was the man for the job. When Obama

took office in 2009, Kundra was appointed as

Chief Information Officer with the power to

review and cancel any project in the Federal

government.

Kundra inherited a legacy of 27 billion dollars

of failing IT projects.

In the previous decade, IT spending had

nearly doubled, growing at an annual rate of

7 per cent. So Kundra immediately capped

the IT Budget - saving over 25 billion dollars

a year.

He forced change to the running of

technology projects by holding deep-dive

project reviews. These reviews, Kundra called

Technical Status, or TechStat reviews.

Each TechStat review entailed a long,

detailed, face-to-face meeting to inspect each

yellow or red status project. These reviews

were intended to delve deep into each project

with a relentless pursuit of oversight to

reshape problem projects - or, ultimately, to

halt and even - terminate them.

To kick off the initiative, Kundra attended

more than three of these meetings a week,

publically issuing memos to agencies where

problems were found. At the Environmental

Protection Agency, for example, one IT

project was found to be one year late and 30

million dollars over budget, so Kundra gave

them a month to put a recovery strategy in

place for the project. He was rolling up hisshirt-sleeves and meeting each agency CIO in

long and detailed meetings. If a project could

not come up with a realistic improvement

plan, it would be cancelled.

Kundra reviewed 38 projects. He saved three

billion dollars by cancelling four and

drastically reducing the scope of 11 other. In

12 cases he found ways to cut the time for

delivery by more than half, from two to threeyears down to an average of 8 months by


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adopting a more Agile approach.

In 2010 he published a "25 Point Plan"

intended to shock the system. It shook up

the counterproductive processes that had led

to so many project failures. Major initiativeswere kicked off to put in place technologies to

complement Agile approaches. For example:

Upgrading project management skillsto include Agile training

Breaking down barriers to Agile byrequiring integrated project teams

Making sure that procurementprofessionals took Agile approaches

Influencing Congress to changelegislative frameworks such as the

Clinger-Cohen Act that were anti-

patterns to Agile development.

So, what is the current status in the US?

In my first talk, I outlined about the failure of

the FBI Virtual Case File project, and how the

subsequent Sentinel project initially faltered.

It started with a massive Project Management

Office (PMO). This goliath superstructure

tried to control the supplier - over 100

million dollars was spent on management 1/4

of the whole budget - completely wasted until

an Agile approach was adopted and the PMO

was disbanded.

The introduction of Agile at the FBI was

initiated by Chad Fulgham, who came in

from the private sector, reorganised the

Sentinel project to use Agile and led theproject to success. Fulgham left earlier this

year to return to the private sector. And, last

year, Vivek Kundra left his post as Federal

CIO for a research position at Harvard.

Whether the US government can maintain

the momentum behind incremental,

accelerated delivery and implement Agile

remains to be seen.

The Government Accountability Office (GAO),

is the US equivalent to the UK National Audit

Office (NAO). The GAO released a report in

July charting progress in the adoption of

Agile in the US government. They found

pockets of excellence at various agencies:

The Department of Defense had a 190million dollar project developing a

Combat Support System using Scrum

A new 150 million dollar project toimprove the management of the

registration of Patents at the

Department of Commerce was also

using Scrum

A 44 million dollar Agile project tocreate a system to manage tax

payments on Branded Prescription

Drugs

However, despite the GAO's enthusiasm for

Agile, the CIO Council, now without Vivek

Kundra, has yet to supply any leadership with

regard to the take-up of Agile specifically. The

Council has released guidance on modular

procurement and modular development but

has not specifically addressed Agile practices.

Vivek Kundra is a tough act to follow. We

will have to wait to see whether the new

Federal CIO, Steven Van Roekel, can keep up

the pressure for reform.

Conclusions

What I have found fascinating in my research

are the similarities and the differences

between the US and the UK.

Both the Obama and the Cameron

administrations have similar aims with

regard to flexible IT development, but they

have taken different approaches towards

making those changes.

On the one hand the US IT Strategy has

measurable targets, but they mainly relate to

deadlines for the production of


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yet more guidance material onmodular development

running training courses setting up clear project management

career paths.

On the other hand the UK IT Strategy has a

vaguely defined target of half of major ICT-

enabled change programmes being Agile by

April this year - a great intent, but one that is

difficult to measure and looking increasingly

over-optimistic.

Certainly, even though both governments

have the aim of moving away from Waterfall,

the approach in each case is different. VivekKundra in the US used a hands-on approach

to re-shape failing projects for faster, more

incremental delivery. In the UK a consensual

approach of management by committee has

been adopted.

At the recent RAISE conference, I presented

to the Agile Research Network a medium

term goal, over the next 3-5 years, to assess

how the switch to Agile in government isprogressing, and whether it is delivering to

the citizen and reducing the cost of project

failures. This research will be helpful in

identifying where the roll-out of Agile is

faltering and why. We need to understand

what barriers there are to the use of Agile in

government, and how to overcome those

barriers.

The follow-up survey by the NAO, as we have

seen, found it impossible to identify a

consistent list of the Agile projects that are

underway.

There is a window of opportunity here, I

suggest, to assess how the switch to Agile in

the US and UK governments is progressing.

To realise this goal of proving the benefits of

Agile to government, we need research over

the next 3-5 years to show:

How many projects are actually usingAgile?

Which strategies for making theswitch have really worked?

What evidence there is that a switchto Agile has brought an economic

benefit?

This is a fertile area in need of more research

- perhaps some collaborative, trans-Atlantic

work.

Will the US resolve and clarify how 'modular'

approaches relate to Agile approaches - are

these terms synonymous? Is the new US

guidance really any more than a new set of

regulations - how can the culture change that

is needed be enacted? And will the vigorous

and decisive leadership during Vivek

Kundra's term as Federal CIO be sustained

now that he has moved on to fresh pastures?

So, finally - we have a unique opportunity to

contribute to the roll-out of Agile by the

existence of similar Agile strategies, in both

the US and the UK.

It's up to us to seize the opportunity and

show the taxpayers of the world that

government can be Agile!

Thank youThank youThank youThank you!!!!

Brian Wernham's new book, "Agile Project Management for Government" was

published this summer by Maitland and Strong (ISBN 978-0-957-22340-0)

[email protected]


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Blog: http://brianwernham/wordpress.com

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