{"id":14725,"date":"2015-08-07T18:12:44","date_gmt":"2015-08-07T18:12:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/federaltimes\/uncategorized\/2015\/08\/07\/can-government-be-agile\/"},"modified":"2026-08-08T04:40:23","modified_gmt":"2026-08-08T04:40:23","slug":"can-government-be-agile","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/federaltimes\/opinions\/2015\/08\/07\/can-government-be-agile\/","title":{"rendered":"Can government be agile?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Agile is having a moment. With a promise of faster and better outcomes for everything from start-ups to the labyrinthine federal government approach to services procurement, the agile way is very much in the spotlight. But along with this sudden fame comes the inevitable oversimplifications and forced contrasts, such as the supposed clash of the methodologies that pits agile against formal project management.\u00a0This is an artificial debate. The truth is that these two approaches can and do co-exist successfully. Project management is the application of knowledge, skills, tools, and techniques to project activities to meet the project requirements; agile allows teams to deliver projects piece-by-piece and make rapid adjustments as needed. Agile is not done in place of managing a project. Instead, it is frequently introduced as a way to speed up phases of a project.\u00a0With its promise of a faster path to the right results and more satisfied customers \u2013 especially on complex projects \u2013 it’s no wonder that agile is a cornerstone of U.S. CIO Tony Scott’s mission to vastly improve customer satisfaction with federal technology services. This Agenda has already yielded such practical tools as the Digital Services Playbook<\/a>\u2014actually released and made public by Scott’s predecessor Todd Park\u2014whose 13 plays from proven private sector best practices include Play 4, “Build the service using agile and iterative processes.” There is also the TechFAR Handbook<\/a>, a helpful guide to flexibilities in the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) that can make it easier for agencies to implement plays in the Playbook through acquisition.\u00a0\u00a0The roots of agile go back nearly 15 years, when a group of programmers met to agree on an alternative to cumbersome, documentation-driven software development processes. The result was the Agile Manifesto and the group, which named itself the Agile Alliance, is still going strong today.\u00a0In that time, agile has not only grown in popularity, but also evolved. Spreading steadily beyond the software development group today the agile methodology is popping up everywhere from HR to marketing to a newly nimble C-suite that is being encouraged to become agile CEOs and agile CFOs.\u00a0I think it’s a healthy evolution. In today’s global environment where rapid change is the new normal and preserving customer loyalty is a challenge, it’s a good thing that agile is not just for IT anymore. Research backs this up: according to Project Management Institute’s Pulse of the Profession\u00ae In-Depth Report: Organizational Agility, organizations that are adept at agile processes are twice as likely to report success with their new initiatives as their counterparts with low agility.\u00a0What does it mean to be agile? The top five practices of organizational agility, according to these study respondents, are:<\/p>\n\n\n\n