Marybel Batjer, secretary of California's Government Operations Agency, acknowledges that agile development represents a vastly different approach for California.
“We take these very complicated things and ask vendors to come up with solutions, and 10 years later we may or may not have a successful solution,” she said. “When a monolithic project doesn’t work, how much frustration are you causing to the end user and the public you are serving, and how many millions of tax dollars are you wasting?”
[Read Part One of this story here.]
In contrast, Batjer said that because agile breaks projects into smaller, more manageable pieces that are not interdependent, you can “fail fast and move on.”
She added that projects created using agile are more likely to work because by design they engage the people who will ultimately use the product.
“The person who really needs it — the social worker who is trying to better the lives of children — is right here with you at the table,” she said. “The end user never leaves.”
As the person who oversees the state agency that includes information technology, general services and personnel, Batjer said that for California to employ the agile approach on a larger scale it will need more people who both understand agile methodology as well as how state government works.
“Our board of directors are the state Legislature and the governor, and their bosses are the voters,” she said. “I want people talking to me about new processes in government who know something about government.”
By the same token, Layton said government’s adapting to agile presents “a fundamental challenge to the power structure of the status quo” and will require new team structures that are flatter, less hierarchical and more flexible in terms of the roles of each team member.
Kevin Gaines, chief of the Child Protection and Family Support Branch at the Department of Social Services, is a lead player in the child welfare system demonstration project, whose role is to ensure that the planning, execution, testing and delivery services address the needs of the end users. Although he is an enthusiastic booster of agile, he’s realistic about the challenges it presents.
“I am of the mindset that we are trying to fit a round peg in a square hole because the work we are trying to do lends itself to monolithic projects,” Gaines said. Such projects historically have created a gulf between the people who write the code and integrate the services and those who use them. “User research and design is a brand-new discipline for us.”
Gaines also acknowledged that acquiring the technical expertise needed to use agile more broadly will have budget and collective bargaining implications, but will nevertheless be necessary.
“I am hellbent on getting technical assistance from private industry to help us build capacity in-house,” he said.
Still to be determined is whether state officials will accept accountability when an important IT project fails, rather than keeping an arm’s length and blaming the business partner that holds the contract, which has been the traditional scenario, Layton said.
“Who wants to be the first executive in the state to say, ‘Yes, I am responsible for the failure of this project?’” he asked.
Those involved in the child welfare demonstration project say they are ready for that challenge, in part because with agile, no single failure will doom the entire project.
“When we fail faster, we correct faster,” Gaines said. “To the extent this helps us evolve to get the expertise needed to manage our own destiny more effectively is a really a good thing.”
This story is published in the spring 2016 issue of Techwire magazine.
