It's certainly no secret that the federal government is among the most rigid of all institutions. Bureaucratic gridlock extends far beyond Capitol Hill and finds its place in most aspects of federal business processes. As a result, agencies, contractors and consultants have built an industry that caters to strict project and program management guidelines to deliver services and information technologies that make government work.
This approach is not always the best methodology to develop technology, however. There is no shortage of examples of federal contracts gone awry due to mismanagement and miscommunication. From the much publicized failure of the FBI's Sentinel program, a network designed to allow agents worldwide to share evidence and tips about investigations -- which replaced the previously abandoned Virtual Case File system -- to the Custom and Border Patrol's SBInet initiative, designed to use ground sensors, infrared cameras and radar to spot illegal immigrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border, millions of taxpayers' dollars have been wasted because the government and its contractors haven't adapted the way they develop projects to the realities of changing requirements needs.
Properly employing agile management in the federal government increases the probability of success for IT projects. In place of a predictive model, where methods are developed to execute against the expected requirements to minimize change, agile methodologies allow government officials and developers to use a process focused on value and adapting to project realities. The process promotes timely delivery of high-quality software that aligns with agencies' needs and goals. An increasing number of federal IT managers, contractors and consultants are turning to agile to deliver value.
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