Project Transparency

One of my teams is transitioning from using Kanban to Scrum for discrete development.

We’ll probably continue using both because some of what we do is specific to a particular release of a product, and some of the work is support work.

I’m excited because we are taking another step in the right direction towards more transparency in our processes of delivering products for our customers and end users.

The last time we did Scrum, the environment just wasn’t right for a full implementation. A previous iteration of Agile methodology had left a bad taste in the mouths of some of our government customers.

From what I’ve been able to learn, much of that was related to communication issues and perhaps the development team being a bit too gung-ho on the by-the-book version of the methodology. A big part of it may have just been that the transition needed to go slower – it’s very difficult to change a culture overnight.

I see that as laying the groundwork for what we’re doing now though. It’s been baby steps for the last 2 years to get to where we are today.

I’m a government contractor, and we’ve now got a government manager signed on as our Product Owner. We’ve also got our end users engaged with our upcoming ability to release and demo much more frequently for them.

I think this transparency is key, and something both the contractor and government side of this project would like to see increase and flourish going forward.

We’re also in the process of automating as much of our build and test process as possible, thereby further empowering us to release often.

I do feel alone out here though. Does anyone else do Agile in government? Anyone? Tell us about it! Write a post or start a discussion thread – or leave a comment below!