Agile in the Federal Government – Going, Going, Gone Beyond Scrum

About a year ago, I co-authored with Bruce Yang a whitepaper entitled “Agile in the Federal Government – Moving Beyond Scrum.”  In that whitepaper, we predicted that the government would follow the lead of the private sector to adopt Agile solutions beyond Scrum to gain broader benefits.  Specifically, the private sector had learned that Scrum by itself would not effectively support scalability to replicate the success of one project across the entire organizational structure and adopted scaling frameworks such SAFe.  Similarly, it realized that the Scrum methodology was not necessarily appropriate for all types of work and looked for alternatives, most notably Kanban.

I am happy to report that the federal sector has in fact followed this anticipated pattern.  Some examples:

• DHS – Using SAFe at USCIS  to enable more rapid, high quality software delivery 

• DOL – “Why, yes, we Kanban” at DOL’s Office of the Solicitor 

• NGA –  SAFe becomes part of NGA’s School for Agile

• GSA – XP techniques adopted along with SAFe
  

We’re trying to compile a more comprehensive list of agencies that have adopted Agile techniques beyond Scrum and how well they have been working.   Would you mind sharing any non-confidential examples that you might be aware of?