Inside the world’s biggest agile software project disaster by Lucy Carey.
From the post:
In theory, it was a good idea – using a smart new methodology to unravel a legacy of bureaucratic tangles. In reality, execution of the world’s largest agile software project has been less than impressive.
By developing its flagship Universal Credit (UC) digital project – an initiative designed to merge six separate benefits strands into one – using agile principles, the UK Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) hoped to decisively lay the ghosts of past DWP-backed digital projects to bed.
Unfortunately, a report by the National Audit Office (NAO) has demonstrated that the UK government’s IT gremlins remain in rude health, with £34 million of new IT assets to date written off by the DWP on this project alone. Moreover, the report states that the project has failed to deliver its rollout targets, and that the DWP is now unsure how much of its current IT will be viable for a national rollout – all pretty damning indictments for an initiative that was supposed to be demonstrating the merits of the Agile Framework for central UK government systems.
Perhaps one of the most biggest errors for implementing an agile approach highlighted by the NAO is the failure of the DWP to define how it would monitor progress or document decisions and the need to integrate the new systems with existing IT, procured and managed assuming the traditional ‘waterfall’ approach.
(…)
Don’t take this post wrong. It is equally easy to screw up with a “waterfall” approach to project management. Particularly with inadequate management, documentation and requirements.
However, this is too good of an example of why everyone in a project should be pushed to write down with some degree of precision what they expect, how to know when it arrives and deadlines for meeting their expectations.
Without all of that in writing, shared writing with the entire team, project “success” will be a matter of face saving and not accomplishment of the original goals, whatever they may have been.
That’s not the world’s biggest agile software project disaster.
Comment by larsga@garshol.priv.no — September 10, 2013 @ 1:20 pm
And your nomination for the “world’s biggest agile software project disaster?”
Perhaps we should have a betting pool. 😉
Comment by Patrick Durusau — September 11, 2013 @ 5:11 pm