Agile at the

Office Of

Personnel

Management

(A True Story)

Richard Cheng Agile trainer & coach

Excella Agile Center of Excellence Lead

Member of Scrum Alliance, Agile Alliance, Agile Leadership Network, PMI

CST, CSM, CSPO, CSP, PMI-ACP, PMP

Founder & executive committee member of Agile Defense Adoption Proponents Team (ADAPT), the Agile DoD Task Force

Deep expertise in Federal, commercial, and non-profit Agile transformations

David Neumann Role @ DOL

Accreditations

Objectives Demonstrate how Agile brought success to OPM’s

Retirement Systems Modernization (RSM) data

program

Discuss challenges with Agile in the Federal

government

Interactive

History - Retirement System

Modernization (RSM)

As is – paper based Federal retirement system and

infrastructure

To be – electronic online system called RetireEZ

Used traditional requirements, design, implement, and

test cycles to develop the system

Testing phases uncovered serious issues

Issues eventually resulted in a mutual agreement by

OPM and the vendor to terminate the RetireEZ contract

Agile Solution

Identify the value

Communication & Collaboration

Iterative delivery

Identify the ValuePrevious efforts tried to do a lot:

Identify the Value

Agile Solution Identify the value

Communication & Collaboration

Iterative delivery

Top Down COTS vs

Bottom Up Custom

COTS

• Executives

• PM / Governance

• Vendor

• Date Driven

Custom

• SMEs• Policy

• Legal Requirements

• Regulations

• Scope Driven

Source of Requirements

Retirement System

OPM Adjudicator

External Data ProvidersDaily meetings with individual data providers

Twice a week meetings with internal

SMES

SMEs understand retirement processShifted focus from telling SMEs how the system works to understanding their needs

SSC's need to know data to sendShifted focus from gathering requirements to confirming requirements

Communication and

CollaborationPrevious solutions – the requirements and the data has to fit the system

New solution – the system has to fit the requirements and the data

Working closely with the SMEs to understand their needs

Understanding true data and program needs

Building collaborative relationship

SMEs vested in program

SMEs identified with the team and attended the SSC meetings as part of the team

Agile Solution Identify the value

Communication & Collaboration

Iterative delivery

RSM Data Project

The Scrum Team

PMs

BA Dev

PMO

SMEs

Timeline In a two week sprint, our planning takes one day.

Thus our planning period is 10% of our overall timeline.

Extremely short (by industry standards) and effective

M T W TH F

Planning SME Meeting SME Meeting

SME Meeting SME Meeting

Planning

1. Sprint Backlog Planning

2. Sprint Backlog Review

3. Sprint Tasking

4. Execution

4. Sprint Closing

5. Sprint Retrospective

Process Workflow Overview1. Sprint Backlog Planning

The business decides and prioritizes features they want ….

2. Sprint Backlog Review

Team estimates and commits to features ….

3. Sprint Tasking

Team determines how to implement features ….

4. Execution

Team performs the work ….

5. Sprint Closing

Team reviews completed work ….

6. Sprint Retrospective

Team improves process ….

Results

Shifted focus from writing about how we’re going to write the

feed specifications, to actually developing the feed

specifications

Published the Guide to Retirement Data Reporting

Delivered a real-world working solution vetted by

external and internal Federal retirement SMEs

OPM piloting additional Agile projects

Challenges -

Governance Governance

PMO addressed most of the governance issues

Status reports easier because we had real time data

EVM largest challenge

EVM is not inherently anti-Agile, issues are with implementations of EVM

Phase based on a waterfall SDLC

Not being able to change line items

Measurement of value

Agile EVMReq

Design

Dev

Release

QA

EVM TimelineEVM Timeline

Development

Requirements

Development

From this to this…

EVM Timeline

To this….

Requirements

Challenges Misconceptions

Funding / Procurement

Politics

Agile and Federal Contracts

Agile Projects

Iteration 1 Iteration 2 Iteration 3 …..

BPA / IDIQ

Task Order 1

Task Order 2

Task Order 3

…..

2. The top features ready for

delivery

0

200

400

600

800

1000

1200

1400

1600

Work Completed

Work Remaining

Project Due Date

Fixed Date / Fixed Scope Outcomes of Fixed Date / Fixed Scope projects:

Waterfall

1. Delivered on time and working as expected

2. “Delivered” on time … with issues

3. Cannot deliver on time, need to extend

Scrum

1. Delivered on time and working as expected

2. The highest valued stories are delivered by the requested date and working as expected

Do not sacrifice quality to meet dates

OPM Current State Despite recent press, focused iterative delivery

produces results

Electronic data standards defined and published

Next steps data viewer is the “future of the solution”

OPM Agile evolution

USAJOBS

USA Staffing

Agile expansion

Mr. Kenneth Zawodney in statements before Congress*:

How Agile has helped:

“..Modernize our IT infrastructure incrementally, employing a cost effective and

efficient modular approach to transition away from paper and into the modern

era…”

Results:

• “…Establishing the capability of gathering electronic data..”

• “…In 2012, we launched the Data Viewer…”

• “..11 agencies are in a pilot for the Data Viewer..”

• “..Continue to deploy the Data Viewer to all agencies within the Federal

government…”

*http://oversight.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Mr.-ZAWODNY-Testimony.pdf

Contact Information

Richard K Cheng

richard.cheng@excella.com

703-967-8620

http://www.excella.com

Twitter: @RichardKCheng