Abstract :
Can government software projects be agile? What do Scrum and XP practices have to offer in this regulated and highly political environment? In this experience report, I will discuss some of the unique challenges in our environment and how we have had to adapt these practices to produce commercial-grade software. I will provide a "report card" on our progress in applying Scrum and XP practices to a clinical data management project over a two-year period. In addition, I will describe the practices that were accepted "religiously", adapted to get the job done, and abandoned completely. In particular, I will discuss how we got around bootstrapping, rational tools, documentation needs, and managing a product backlog for a diverse, decentralized user community. Putting these practices to work was hard, but they resulted in better team communication, a more usable product, and improved partnership between the users and the development team. In addition, staying agile is just as hard as becoming agile.
Keywords :
government; software development management; bootstrapping; documentation needs; extreme programming; government software projects; product backlog; rational tool; scrum practices; team communication; Data analysis; Databases; Diseases; Documentation; Government; Humans; Product development; Project management; Safety; Workflow management software;
