Agile development takes practice

It has been 10 years since the government released its agile development manifesto, and it seems that it has taken almost this amount of time for the approach to start gaining traction with organisations.

Many argue that the reason it has taken so long is that the cultural adjustment needed is significant.

Agile is an alternative to waterfall development, which has dominated large-scale IT implementations in recent decades. However, waterfall, an approach that sees requirements and a specification set out at the beginning of the project, has problems that are becoming increasingly apparent.

"There are some very serious pitfalls to waterfall," says Michael Azoff, principal analyst at Ovum.

"A lot of effort goes into generating requirements and creating a specification, which you then work from for your build," he adds.

"However, it is difficult to know requirements precisely, especially at the beginning of a project. These change through the lifetime of the project itself.

"Testing also tends to be done at the end of a waterfall project, where there will be a lot of pressure with the deadline approaching, and as a result people take shortcuts."

Agile development allows companies flexibility by not having to commit to a set of requirements and specifications that are set in stone throughout an implementation.

Instead the client will meet with the systems integrator on what is typically a three to four week basis, where what has been developed so far will be heavily tested.

This then allows the client to see what is working effectively, and what isn't, and where changes can be made if necessary.

"The client is far more involved in an agile project," said Martin Rice, chief executive of software development company Erudine.

"You test the hell out of everything as you build it, and as a result things can only go wrong over a one-month period, rather than a five-year period," he adds.

Government becoming more agile

The benefits of agile have even managed to penetrate the public sector, where large-scale projects within the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) are being run according to the approach.

The DWP's Universal Credit system is an example of this and follows a recommendation to use agile in the recent Institute for Government report.

"There will be agile activity in 60 per cent of the department," says Malcolm Whitehouse, group applications director, DWP, when speaking at a recent public accounts committee meeting looking at IT and governance.

"However, with core infrastructure delivery projects we will use more standard development practices. We didn't want to take a blanket approach to agile," he added.

Government CIO Joe Harley agrees about the benefits of agile and denies that there are obstacles to adopting the approach in the public sector, but suggests it is suited to some projects more than others.

"We used agile for the first time last year to develop the automated service delivery approach," said Harley at the same committee meeting.

"It is most useful when engaging with citizens and customer direction, basically, when adopting a customer-centric approach," he added.

Rice suggests, however, that government departments, even though they may want agile, will struggle to adopt it with the current procurement systems in place.

"Even when IT sees the light and wants agile, they can't because of their current procurement methods," says Rice.

"In government, you cannot procure something until you have both predetermined what it will cost, and what you are building," he adds.

"It requires a fundamental mind-shift to get to the stage where you are comfortable saying you do not know what you are getting."

Technical services director at stationary company Statco, Terry Blake, who has experience of agile in the public sector, as well as using it as an approach within Statco, agrees with Rice but suggests this is beginning to change.

"Public procurement is geared towards a waterfall approach," says Blake.

"But you are starting to see a big push from government to alter this procurement process, so that will make it possible," he adds.

The culture of agile

Although agile's benefits are quite widely understood, many IT managers still have concerns.

"Malcolm Whitehouse once said that the government was adopting agile, and the proof was that he had put people on a three-day training course," says Rice.

"I cried with laughter at this. Agile is a bad name for the process, it gives the impression that it is anarchic. But it is actually far more disciplined than any other development process I have followed," he explains

"You have to unlearn your old way of working, and you just can't train somebody in agile development methods in three days."

Azoff agrees.

"Agile only works when you have a suitable culture for it," he says.

"This is a really big change issue, especially for the largest organisations who can take up to 10 years to come round to the agile way of thinking," he adds.

"Its biggest downside is that you need a lot of training, as the methodology requires so much discipline. Waterfall is far simpler, and is certainly not as sophisticated as agile.

"Organisations need to invest heavily in this training, and if they don't the projects will end up being chaotic.

"Having said this, I believe that agile is the only realistic alternative to older methods if things are to improve, there is nothing else. But companies also need to be wary of the pitfalls".