When the National Association of State Chief Information Officers surveyed leaders on their top 10 priorities for 2016, many familiar topics reappeared, like security and cloud services. One new priority also made the cut: agile development.
California has long used the traditional “waterfall” method for IT projects: a project is completed in sequences before teams can move on to the next phase. But that has left California with a legacy of projects that have busted their budgets and taken years to complete, with technology and needs changing before anyone can use the end product.
In this new agile approach, projects are completed in smaller “sprints.” Teams are regularly turning out usable products, so those early iterations can be continually assessed and adjusted as needed. Endorsers of the approach promise projects that are completed much more rapidly, at a lower cost and with a final product that’s actually viable.
California is now in the procurement phase of its first effort to use the agile method with the Department of Social Services’ new child welfare system. Techwire spoke with John Boule, director of the Office of Systems Integration, about that high-profile project and his larger vision for how agile might help transform the way California does business.
Q: Can you give us your take on how agile development is different from the traditional model that’s been used?
On mega, multi-hundred-million-dollar systems, we go through a process that looks at technology and business process and packages it into a large procurement that can take multiple years to get to contract. We then work with the vendor to get into design, development, testing and build. So by the time an end user sees the new functionality or system, it’s based on a technology that is at least 5 years old. It led us to say, “We need to do this business differently. Is there a way skilled vendors can compete to deliver a functionality and have the state take responsibility to integrate it?” That led us to do a pivot and to look at agile procurement, as well as development, to implement systems and technology with the end user’s needs in mind. How is that end user going to touch, feel and perform their job?
The agile process allows for two-week sprints to get prototype software back into the hands of a user group so we can ask, “Is this what you meant? Is this how it’s going to work? Is this what you were saying when you talked about that requirement or how you wanted to do it?”Agile provides for multiple feedback loops to get a product now. The scope of that product, at least initially, is very narrow so that we can get that in place and we can make adjustments as we go forward, all with the eye of what the end user needs.
Q: How does this new model work with the traditional funding and procurement methods? Has it been a challenge to align those two?
The way we’ve aligned those two is to make sure that everybody within the state is aligned to do something different. Our statewide procurement division at the California Department of Technology has been a partner in this pivot, as have our federal partners. We are also working with the Department of General Services to narrow down the scope of each procurement so that we’re able to apply agile development methodology.
Q: Why do you think this has become such a key focus for the public sector?
There are a couple of environmental factors. As we know, technology is changing very quickly. Every single day there are new advancements, and we need to get modern technology into the hands of our end users more quickly. When we look specifically at child welfare, it is a system that was implemented in the mid-’90s, probably based on earlier technology. It’s been a good, solid system, but it hasn’t provided new functionality.
The world has changed significantly since this system was put in place. Mobile technology, the Internet has come into play. With agile procurement, we don’t have to wait five years to get functionality into the hands of our users, and we can make sure the system stays relevant. When you look at the child welfare system, it supports some of the most vulnerable children in California. We need to make sure our child welfare professionals have the modern tools they need to do a very difficult job.
Q: Are there certain types of projects that lend themselves better to this approach, or is this something you see happening statewide?
Our focus is to use the child welfare system as a demonstration project — to see how to use this agile procurement and modular procurement to fulfill the need of a large business transformation project. We’re going to learn a lot as we go through this, and then we can look at applicability for other areas.
Q: Were there particular things about the child welfare project that made it a good candidate for this pilot?
The federal Administration on Children, Youth and Families definitely wants to see child welfare automation done differently. They’ve worked with the federal entity 18F, which is a consulting group within the General Services Administration that has made some of these pivots to agile development in the federal space. They are going to be working and partnering with us on child welfare. Our federal partners said to California, “Hey, we would like you guys to be leaders in this, and we know that the federal government has done this and we want to bring our resources to bear on this.” So it is a support model within the state for this demonstration project, as well as with our federal partners.
Q: Code for America is supporting this project. How much do you think groups like it might play a role in these types of projects going forward?
We spent quite a bit of time on this particular project, almost two years, really identifying the overall objective and the vision of this solution delivery. It was because of that work that allowed us to say, “Great. Our objective does not change. Our vision does not change.” It’s simply the way of delivering and meeting the objective or having the ability to leverage more of an innovative approach. In addition, strong federal support made this a very strong candidate for a demonstration project.
Read part 2 of this Q&A here.
This Q&A is published in the spring 2016 issue of Techwire magazine.
