Agile in government: "How did you do that?"

At PreviousNext, we've been delivering agile projects for government clients for many years, with varying levels of success.

We've had a few big successes though, and while discussing one of them recently with a large consulting firm, we touted the agile approach as the main reason things went so well. Then someone asked, "OK, but how did you do that? How did you get them to agree to it?"

There's no simple answer, but in thinking it over, there are many factors that have contributed to our agile approach finding acceptance in government.

In this session, I'll review some of our best (and worst) forays into agile projects for government clients, to get to the bottom of it. The best have resulted in long-term relationships with projects coming in one after the other. The worst have provided very valuable lessons for all of us!

Some of the topics I'll cover are:

• Why Drupal is perfectly positioned for agile delivery
• Flexibility is critical so forget about a one-size-fits-all process
• Developing a distribution for government agencies turned out to be a good idea
• Common problems in government projects, and how to avoid them
• Messing up is perfectly fine, it's all about how you react
• How to build trust by delivering early and often
• Why I spend a lot of time persuading clients not to spend money

Disclaimer: This session will be based on real-life experience and I will not be getting into technicalities of agile theory or frameworks. No familiarity with any particular agile methodology is required. Strict adherants of scrum may find some content offensive, but I would welcome their feedback nonetheless.

About PreviousNext (and me)

PreviousNext is a Drupal services company in Sydney. We developed and maintain the aGov distribution aimed at Australian Government websites. Our website has a list of recent projects.

I've been working with Drupal for almost five years, and have been a client service manager at PreviousNext for four. Most of the projects I've managed have been for government, across local, state and federal levels.