How we embrace Scaled Agile to move from ideas to mission value
As federal agency leaders look to upgrade their systems, improve customer experience, and embrace new technologies and ways of working, the list of potential modernization projects grows larger every day. How do you figure out what to work on—and then deliver it as fast as possible to drive mission outcomes?
Two words: Scaled Agile. As a customer-centric, outcome-oriented, value-driven way to manage large-scale application delivery, Agile approaches such as the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) offer established practices and patterns that help organizations make better software and systems through the carefully orchestrated efforts of high-performing teams. In the federal government context, we find Scaled Agile to be a useful tool in helping program and IT leaders negotiate and balance delivery—not favoring, for example, new features at the expense of technical debt or vice versa.
But while Scaled Agile is most often associated with large portfolio modernizations, it can also be extremely effective on smaller projects. Drawn from our experience of modernizing some of the federal government’s most impactful initiatives—ranging in size from large 9-team programs to smaller 2-team programs—here are four best practices for making Scaled Agile work for your government projects.
1. Focus on outcomes over outputs. An outcome-oriented mindset permeates every aspect of Scaled Agile delivery. Contrary to the waterfall days of yore, when success was measured by the eventual delivery of a product that seemed like the right idea when it was painfully specced out at the start—but that often failed to meet expectations by the time it was built—Agile delivery places a premium on delivering customer value. In practice, this means bringing human-centered design experts into the teaming mix to ensure that you’re building the right solution at the right time in the right way to deliver the mission outcomes you’re after.
2. Tap into a Scaled Agile Community of Practice. While certain Agile tenets, patterns, and practices apply across the board, no two agencies, programs, or projects are alike—and a Community of Practice allows you to benefit from the breadth and depth of experience and lessons learned that Scaled Agile experts bring to the table. A Community of Practice also guarantees an exceptional level of quality in your practitioners, thanks to the rigorous training and certifications required. At ICF, we have a Scaled Agile Community of Practice comprised of SAFe experts who are embedded in every corner of our organization—and we come together to share ideas, ask for help, and tailor custom approaches and strategies.
3. Respect the process but stay flexible. Scaled Agile empowers us to customize our approach to value delivery based on the culture of organizations, change in priorities, or in the face of uncertainty and new challenges. It allows us to employ different flavors of Agile such as Scrum, Kanban, or a hybrid approach and gives us the ability to pivot on reporting, metrics, SLAs, etc. to reflect changes in how we do Agile. We have a proven track record in shifting an entire program from Scrum to Kanban in a short timeframe (2 weeks) without any disruption to value delivery. Not only are we flexible in terms of accommodating changing requirements, but we are flexible in HOW we do Agile.
4. Tightly integrate Scaled Agile and DevOps. Aim to create a cohesive environment where Agile and DevOps complement each other. This leads to improved efficiency, faster time-to-market, and higher-quality products. What does this look like in practice? Adopt Agile’s rapid development capabilities and combine them with DevOps’ infrastructure to enable frequent and reliable software releases. Use Agile methodologies to manage the flow of work and incorporate DevOps for real-time monitoring and feedback, enabling data-driven decision-making and adjustments. And finally, form cross-functional teams that include members with diverse skills across development, operations, and quality assurance to foster collaboration and shared responsibility for the end-to-end product lifecycle.
Modernization is about business and technology, but it’s also about people. At the heart of Scaled Agile are teams of people who need to believe in the change you are championing and understand how and why to contribute their time and talents to the effort. As we’ve seen in our government modernization projects, Agile works well on projects of varying sizes—if you follow the best practices above and keep your eyes trained on your mission objectives.
