Agile development: a never-ending change programme?

Government committee examined the benefits of agile development, identified retention of knowledge and increased experimentation

The government should be wary of agile development, the much-lauded IT development method, for fear of it resulting in a "never-ending change programme," according to one speaker at a parliamentary committee held earlier today.

The committee was entitled Good Governance: the effective use of IT.

Janet Grossman, chairwoman of the public sector council and director of strategy and execution at CSC, explained that the constant change seen during agile development programmes means projects are never finished.

However, Martin Rice, chief executive of agile software development at service provider Erudine, who was also speaking at the committee, said some very successful private companies use constant change programmes, citing Facebook as an example.

Agile development was being discussed as an alternative to the widely criticised mammoth government IT deals of the past decade. Some of the most-cited examples were those underpinning the development and distribution of ID cards as well as the Child Support Agency and the Rural Payments Agency IT systems.

These Goliath IT deals were pilloried as much for their static inability to respond to needs as for their high costs and tendency to overrun.

"Agile" deals, on the other hand, would be small scale and modified iteratively according to changing requirements. They would require government to develop a close working relationship with the providers – likely to be smaller, more agile companies than those used currently.

Committee chairman Bernard Jenkin MP mooted the possibility that where big IT deals had led to consolidation of the IT industry – as a result of large companies increasing their scale, making them better able to meet the needs of these IT projects – the adoption of an agile development approach might lead to industry fragmentation.

Rice agreed that it might, because making government contracts accessible to smaller companies would open up a new supply chain and result in an increased number of smaller companies.

However, David Clarke, chief executive of the BCS, said that big companies would respond and change their approach and business model accordingly.

IT suppliers: a cartel?

Grossman argued that there was not enough desire to make change within government, with many civil servants happy in their comfort zone of dealing with big suppliers that they know well.

Rice added that although he realised "cartel" was a dangerous word, he believed that the current situation was close to that. "These suppliers talk to each other and know that if they don't get one deal, another will come up," he said.

He explained that he thought the situation required action: "An oligarchy is not going to disband of its own accord. It needs to be destroyed by changing the processes by which government procures IT."

Clarke was slightly more diplomatic: "I don't see any evidence of a cartel system, but from an outsider's perspective it does look like a racket," he said.

All expertise outsourced

One hold that the IT industry has over the government, according to the panel, is its technical knowledge. Grossman explained that to procure successfully the buyer needs to have some understanding of the product it is buying – but that because so many government IT projects had been outsourced, it had not retained this knowledge.

"There are very few IT career paths in government. Because so much is outsourced, the government has no choice but to bring in expertise from the private sector," she said.

Rice said he agreed and explained that he felt the government needed business change and programme managers, people who are able to monitor IT projects.

"We don't need many of them and they would bring the costs right down," he said. Grossman added that the fast-track civil servant scheme which has been running for 10 years has a zero rate of attrition and brings high-calibre people into Whitehall should be made more use of. "This is a good means of retaining well-trained staff," she said.

More experimental

Another line of debate during the meeting was that the government should be more open to new ideas in its approach. Rice explained that the US government was using Google Health to store patient records systems, while our bespoke patient records system within the NPfIT, has "already cost £6bn and is always five years off".

Grossman argued that the government needed to set up incubation cells that examined the viability of concepts to trial innovative ideas.

She added that "in the noble interest of fairness" the government is reluctant to use experts to brainstorm new approaches to technology problems, a practice that is widespread in the private sector.

"It feels it has to invite either everybody or nobody along," she added.