Why Agile in Government Sucks

I’ll start off by stating the obvious, the state of agile in government is bad. With the exception of a few edge case “innovation centers” most government agencies have tried agile and it has failed for them.

But why has it failed? Is it a lack of training? I don’t think so, I know many government employees that have the same certification that I have (certified scrum master) but don’t understand the basics. Mostly I think the lack of understanding comes from never having the opportunity to truly use agile on any of their projects. Most agile projects are given the “hybrid” approach of waterfall and agile mixed together where major milestones are defined up front and the work is supposed to done in an agile fashion. This goes back to the lack of understanding of how agile works, if the entire process is not agile it will fail. The product owner, key stake holders, project manager, developers, and testers all need to be aware and follow the agile process.

The leadership in government is too afraid to use an agile methodology, even if they say they want to. This is proven by the “hybrid” approach I just described. If we really want change in government and how they run technical projects, the leadership must be trained not just the developers and project managers. Without this education, every agile project is doomed to fail before it starts.

The other big issue I’ve seen is that agile is tried, incorrectly. Too often sprint planning doesn’t occur, or the development team is too afraid to let their leadership know that the items put into the sprint backlog is too much effort, or doesn’t build upon the previous iteration which makes the work more difficult to complete or to show any kind of progress. When this happens, that fear from the leadership kicks in and everything is rolled back to a pseudo waterfall approach, and again the project fails and agile is to blame.

My final thoughts on this is to remember that agile is just a process. Without the buy-in of leadership, education of all personnel involved (not just the devs), and proper planning agile in government is doomed. The other thing to keep in mind is that agile will not alleviate budget issues, personnel issues or cost less (at least up front). Agile requires lots of planning and coordination, more so than waterfall typically does and is very fast paced. This fast pace allows everyone to see what issues the project has and allows everyone on the team to resolve those issues before they become a larger problem. Don’t be afraid of a setback or failure, if agile is used properly those setbacks will be minor and a good product will be the outcome, but only if everyone from the leadership down is on board.

Have anything to add? Think I’m off base with any of this? Let me know if the comments and thanks for reading!