ZD net have published an article which considers how the Universal Credit programme, described as the world's biggest agile software project, has run into cost overruns and delays.
Last weeks National Audit Office (NAO) report stated that the UK government has had to write off at least £34m on the programme and delay the national launch of Universal Credit.
The NAO report criticises the DWP’s use of ‘agile’ for developing UC because they had never used this approach before.
In relation to UC an ‘agile’ approach involves setting up teams who work on a particular project, the results of which then feed into the other projects. For example a team could develop the claiming process for a single claimant. A team working on lone parents or couples who claim with children can then utilise results from the single claimant project for their own project. A team considering those claiming with health conditions may use what is learned from both of the other projects.
Jose Casal-Gimenez, chairman of the BCS agile methods specialist group considers that the DWP approach wasn't agile enough because there wasn't enough emphasis on "real-world testing" and learning from user feedback.
At least one Government Department agrees with this view. Agile was used to develop the gov.uk website by the Cabinet Office Government Digital Service. The NAO reported that "The Cabinet Office does not consider that the Department [DWP] has at any point prior to the reset appropriately adopted an agile approach to managing the Universal Credit programme."
The ZD net article suggests the DWP:
- set out IT requirements for suppliers too rigidly at the start of the programme.
- made procurement decisions before agile was even thought of as a delivery approach and which appear to be at odds with agile delivery.
- rushed agile development, particularly dangerous in large organisations where hundreds of people have never delivered a project using the methodology.
- failed to understood the difficulty of shifting from the traditional 'waterfall' system to an unfamiliar development methodology, while also delivering a multi-billion pound IT programme intended to deliver £74bn of benefits a year to around eight million people.
- failed to see agile as something that would initially add time to project delivery, believing it would do the opposite.
- believed agile would cut development time, allowing the Universal Credit programme to be expedited and rolled out in 2013, two years earlier than it believed was possible under the waterfall system.
Casal-Gimenez believes the UC programme may now be more on track for truly agile delivery following the DWP's decision to pilot the system at a single job centre in Greater Manchester, providing benefits to just 1,000 claimants.
"To do it the way they're doing it with the one centre in Manchester, with the controlled number of people, with the simple benefit, feels like it's much more aligned to an agile approach," he said.
"They can the start learning from that and putting in the bare bones of Universal Credit and then add more benefits, locations or claimants.
"In that way they can keep adding to the richness of what Universal Credit can do, on the basis that this is a live system and they're getting feedback and learning lessons.
"It feels like a more realistic way of tackling the big challenge of connecting and creating lots of different complex systems."
To view the full article go to http://www.zdnet.com/how-even-agile-development-couldnt-keep-this-mega-project-on-track-7000020336/