PODCAST: How the Federal Government can Overcome Barriers to Agile Transformation
In the following Makpar Fed Mission success podcast interview, Fareeha Khan, Marketing Manager at Makpar, hosted a deep-dive discussion on Makpar’s approach to Agile development in the federal arena with Aqueel Iqbal, Scrum Master at Makpar; and Jim Gross, Agile Lead at Makpar.
Agile development in the federal space results in many critical benefits, which includes increased efficiencies, better communications, more collaboration amongst teams, increased transparency, and improved cost-savings.
Though there continues to be ongoing challenges when it comes to shifting to Agile development, which includes managing decisions through the chain of command. In addition, leadership can be reticent to decentralize decision-making – pointing to the need for empowering project teams to drive efforts forward.
Shifting into an Agile mindset is critical to gaining full buy-in from all levels to create more transparency. It’s also important to show leadership the outcomes of the two-week sprint demos to build trust between project teams and leadership. Overcoming anti-patterns, which are negative actions that are repeated by teams that slow down development, is also vitally important.
Following are highlights from this podcast interview:
The benefits of embracing Agile development in the federal space. (:45)
The challenges that federal agencies face when it comes to Agile development. (1:30)
How to overcome chain of command issues and decentralize decision-making. (3:16)
How Agile teams can build trust with leadership. (5:35)
What are anti-patterns in Agile development. (8:00)
Specific examples of anti-patterns in Agile development. (9:55)
How Makpar can help federal agencies making the transition to the Agile world. (19:38)
Jim’s closing ‘fun facts’ about U.S. geography. (22:54)
Click here to read Makpar’s recent blog post about how decentralized decision-making can help Federal agencies achieve effective Agile efficiency.
Utilizing Agile methods like Scrum, Kanban, and Lean development, Makpar’s Agile practice minimizes communication gaps between Development and Operations teams by expanding DevOps-based automation to the entire development lifecycle.
Please contact us here for more information about how our Agile capabilities can help your agency get on the path to streamlined software development.