12 JOURNAL OF GOVERNMENT FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT

SPRING 2018
 Agile Project
Management on
Government
Finance Projects
By Chris Kraft, CGFM, PMP, PMI-ACP

W
hile agile software development is not new,
there are many assumptions made about what
constitutes agile. Many of the early applications
of agile were focused on product development.
These were later adopted for software development
and have led to the evolution of many different agile
methodologies. There are many benefits to using
agile over the more traditional, sequential waterfall
approach. These benefits can be leveraged on federal
projects to deliver increased value, reduced risk,
enhanced visibility and greater adaptability. Agencies
looking to implement or expand the use of agile should
evaluate their specific circumstances to determine
what approach will work best.

SPRING 2018 JOURNAL OF GOVERNMENT FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT 13

 Agile Iterations
Requirements,
design, development,
and testing
Working
Software
Waterfall Phases
Milestone
Requirements
WHAT IS AGILE?
Most people are familiar with
the concept of agile, but that does
not mean they understand it.
Some associate agile with a form
of anarchy where everyone does
whatever he or she wants.1 Harvard
Business Review found many execu-
tives do not really understand agile,
and they manage projects in ways
that undermine the effectiveness of
agile teams.2 Agile methodologies
have been used in different forms
for decades. While most people
today associate agile with software
development, there is a long history
with product development.
In 1986, Hirotaka Takeuchi and
Ikujiro Nonaka published an article
in the Harvard Business Review that
looked at how companies were
moving away from a sequential
to more holistic approach to
developing products.3 The article
looked at the six characteristics of
this holistic approach as “built-in
instability, self-organizing project
teams, overlapping development
14 JOURNAL OF GOVERNMENT FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT SPRING 2018
Requirements, Requirements,
design, development, design, development,
and testing and testing
Working Working
Software Software
Milestone
Design Milestone
Development
phases, ‘multilearning’, subtle
control and organizational transfer
of learning.4 Companies applying
this holistic approach were able to
implement flexible processes for
new product development. The
authors used an analogy of rugby,
where you pass the ball with the
team as the unit moves up the
field.5
The arguments made by
Takeuchi and Nonaka, including
the need to implement approaches
to product development that
included speed and flexibility, have
influenced the software develop-
ment community. In 2001, a group
of software developers got together
to discuss lightweight software
development methods. They shared
best practices, identified common
themes and developed a common
purpose for agile practitioners.6 The
result was the Agile Manifesto.7
While agile methods existed before
2001, this manifesto has become a
foundation for agile software devel-
opment. This manifesto includes
four values and 12 principles of
agile software development.
Requirements, Release
design, development,
and testing
Working
Software
Software
delivered at
end of process
Test
The group that put together the
Agile Manifesto was “uncovering
better ways of developing software
by doing it and helping others do
it.”8 They outlined the things they
have come to value, presented in
the form of things valued over other
things. The four values below have
come to define agile.
The first value is individuals and
interactions over processes and
tools. This highlights a preference
for personal communication. While
processes and tools are important,
it is more important to focus on
personal communication. Teams
should seek to abandon assembly-
line mentality in favor of a fun,
creative environment for problem
solving.9
The second value is working
software over comprehensive
documentation. This value focuses
on applying effort where it will
deliver the most benefit. Delivering
software to the customer is more
important than delivering compre-
hensive documentation. This does
not mean agile is against producing
documentation. It simply means
working software is valued over
endless documentation. The belief
is the team can learn faster by
seeing results of working software
and getting it to the customer for
feedback.10 The importance of
experimentation also underlies
this idea of delivering working
software.
The third value is customer
collaboration over contract
negotiation. A key element of
agile is to integrate the customer
into the project. This integrated
team that fosters collaboration can
be much more responsive to the
business needs and better suited
to developing working software
that meets customer requirements.
The rapid prototyping and frequent
review cycles help better align
the work done by the team with
the business value sought by the
customer. Contract negotiation
is still important, but customer
collaboration is more valued.
The final value is responding to
change over following a plan. The
Agile Manifesto values the ability
to respond to change over rigid
adherence to a plan. As most people
The Agile Manifesto — a statement of values
Individuals and
interactions
Working software
Customer
collaboration
Responding
to change
SPRING 2018 JOURNAL OF GOVERNMENT FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT 15
have experienced, plans, especially
those for multi-year projects,
encounter change. Agile values the
ability to respond to change. This
responsiveness allows the team
to better align to the needs of the
organization and the customer.
As the organization changes and
requirements evolve, the team can
adapt. It is still important to have
a plan, but more value is placed on
those tasks that do not change by
the time they are executed.11
These four values are supported
by the following 12 guiding
principles:
nn Customer satisfaction
nn Welcoming change
nn Trusting individuals
nn Frequent delivery
nn Daily interactions
nn Face-to-face conversation
nn Working software
nn Sustainable development are scrum, kanban and extreme
nn Technical excellence
nn Simplicity
nn Self-organizing teams derived the methodology from
nn Regular reflection
over Process and tools
Comprehensive
over documentation
over Contract negotiation
over Following a plan
These values and principles
work together to provide an
overall methodology for agile
software development. One
common theme is the importance
placed on empiricism. The team
is encouraged to try new things,
stop, reflect and improve.12 Other
common themes include focus
on business value and customer
satisfaction. As we will see, there
are many different types of agile
methodologies that all build on
the Agile Manifesto.
TYPES OF AGILE
Agile really refers to a group of
software development methodolo-
gies based on interactive develop-
ment. When implementing using
agile, you will leverage one of many
different methodologies. Some of
the most popular methodologies
programming (XP).
Jeff Sutherland and Ken
Schwaber, the founders of scrum,
Takeuchi and Nonaka’s work,
 Agile
Waterfall

Agile
Waterfall

Business Value Risk

Agile
Agile

Waterfall
Waterfall

Visibility Adaptability

applying the rugby metaphor to
software development.13 Scrum
has become one of the most widely
used agile project management
methods.14 Scrum uses time-bound
sprints that typically range from
two to four weeks. There are
defined planning sessions at the
start of the sprint, review sessions
at the end of the sprint and
retrospectives to look for areas to
improve. The team is self-managing
and comprised of cross-functional
members.
Kanban is another methodology
that focuses on workload manage-
ment and change management.
This is often used to manage IT
support and maintenance, where
priorities can change as frequently
as hourly or daily. Work in progress
(WIP) is limited to allow the team
to focus on completing the highest
priority items. Kanban boards
are used to visualize workflow
and show what tasks are planned,
current and completed. This board
helps manage flow throughout the
lifecycle.
XP is a software development
methodology based on the
core values of simplicity,
communication, feedback and
courage. The strength of XP is the
ability to perform rapid analysis,
coding and testing cycles within
short iterations, typically one week
in duration with a collocated team.15
A key differentiator is the technical
discipline and sophistication of
testing that is highly automated.
WHY AGILE?
Organizations are making
the shift to agile to leverage
many benefits over the
classical, linear waterfall
methodology. Agile
can increase business
value, improve project
visibility, decrease risk
and enable adapt-
ability. Projects
managed using
agile incrementally
develop software
and deploy to production
as work is completed. This
ability to more quickly deploy
working software provides
business value much earlier in
the process when compared to
waterfall. Agile also provides
more visibility into the project
versus the traditional waterfall
approach. With waterfall, users
are typically engaged early on
and then again during testing and
training. In agile, users are part
of the core team, and they are
regularly engaged through ongoing
collaboration.
Waterfall projects tend
to have a lot of risk
throughout the life of a
project. Agile helps to
mitigate the risk by
using a shorter feed-
back loop. Issues are
identified must faster,
and they can be corrected
quickly. Waterfall has a
higher risk throughout the
project given the amount
of work done independent
of customer reviews and
delivery. Agile projects are
better equipped to adapt to
changing business require-
ments. The increased
visibility, customer

16 JOURNAL OF GOVERNMENT FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT SPRING 2018

collaboration and time-boxed
delivery iterations provide the
opportunity to reevaluate priority
on a regular basis.
Agile provides a number of addi-
tional benefits, including increased
team productivity and employee
satisfaction.16 Redundant meetings,
repetitive planning sessions, excess
documentation, quality defects and
low-value products can be mini-
mized.17 Improved visibility results
in greater customer engagement
and satisfaction.18
CASE STUDY
Many accounting and finance
projects involve large enterprise
resource planning (ERP) or other
commercial off-the-shelf (COTS)
products. These projects tend
to be very large and high risk.
Stakeholder engagement is often
low, and stakeholders tend to be
disappointed
with the results.
Using a waterfall
approach, there
is a limited
opportunity for
customer engagement,
primarily during the
requirement and design
phases of the project.
Development often occurs
in a vacuum, with little or no
opportunity to adapt to changing
circumstances or customer
feedback.
A federal shared services
provider (FSSP) recently evaluated
using agile for a system enhance-
ment project. The agency was
implementing a new enterprise
reporting solution using a waterfall
approach. There was a desire
to leverage an iterative delivery
approach to decrease risk, increase
customer engagement and provide
additional value. After comparing
the traditional and agile
methodologies and evaluating
them to the project, there
was consensus agile
would be a good fit.
The project manager
researched agile
methodologies and
recommended using
scrum. The project
was restructured
to operate using
scrum.
Moving to agile
allowed the FSSP
to decrease the
time required to go live
on the new reporting
solution by six months.
Once deployed to
production, the FSSP was
able to almost immediately start
deploying additional functionality
in the sprints. The sprints are two
weeks long and include planning
sessions at the start of the sprint,

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SPRING 2018 JOURNAL OF GOVERNMENT FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT 17

daily scrum meetings, review
sessions at the end of the
sprint and an overall retro-
spective with each sprint.
Customers are now more
engaged and have the
ability to provide the
FSSP with additional
feedback. While the team is
still experimenting to deter-
mine how to best leverage agile
to deliver value, the shift to
agile has been very successful.
IMPLEMENTING AGILE
Agile does not work for
everything. It does work
well for complex problems
where the solution is initially
unknown, product requirements
will most likely change, work
can be modularized and close
collaboration is feasible.19 Research
has shown the most successful
introductions of agile usually start
small.20 Success in one area will
help create organizational advo-
cates to deploy agile in other areas.
The Government Accountability
Office (GAO) published a 2012
study of effective practices and
challenges applying agile.21 The
study found organizations should
start with agile guidance and put
together an adoption strategy. They
should look for impediments at the
organizational and project levels
that may be impacting the adoption
of agile. Another recommended
practice is to obtain stakeholder
and customer feedback frequently.
Progress also needs to be tracked
and made visible.
18 JOURNAL OF GOVERNMENT FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT SPRING 2018
GAO found several chal-
lenges in the federal environ-
ment, including struggles
with procurement practices,
trouble committing staff and
unclear guidance on agile.
Teams also had difficulty
collaborating closely and
had problems transitioning
to self-directed work.
The hope is many of
these challenges are
addressed as federal
agencies continue to
expand their use of
agile methodologies.
Agile usage continues
to grow as organizations
are able to realize
improvements over
traditional waterfall
methodologies.
While used initially
for product development, agile
is now associated more with
software development. The Agile
Manifesto and other initiatives
have continued to expand on the
general understanding of agile
and its application to software
development. The benefits to
visibility, risk, business value
and adaption continue to provide
incentives to use agile. This
includes the use in the financial
management space to manage ERP
and COTS projects. Before moving
to agile, make sure you evaluate the
benefits given your organization
and the project.
Endnotes
1. Darrell K. Rigby, Jeff Sutherland, and
Hirotaka Takeuchi, Embracing Agile, Harvard
Business Review, May 2016, available at
https://hbr.org/2016/05/embracing-agile
2. Ibid.
3. Hirotaka Takeuchi & Ikujiro Nonaka,
The New New Product Development Game,
Harvard Business Review, January 1986,
available at https://hbr.org/1986/01/the-
new-new-product-development-game
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
6. Rachel Alt-Simmons, Agile by Design,
2015.
7. Kent Beck et al., Manifesto for Agile
Software Development, 2001, available at
www.Agilemanifesto.org
8. Ibid.
9. See Endnote 1.
10. See Endnote 1.
11. See Endnote 1.
12. Jason Fair, Agile versus Waterfall:
approach is right for my ERP project?, available
at https://www.pmi.org/learning/library/
agile-versus-waterfall-approach-erp-
project-6300
13. See Endnote 6.
14. See Endnote 6.
15. See Endnote 6.
16. See Endnote 1.
17. See Endnote 1.
18. See Endnote 1.
19. See Endnote 1.
20. See Endnote 1.
21. U.S. Government Accountability
Office (2012, July), Software Development,
Effective Practices and Federal Challenges in
Applying Agile Methods (Publication No. GAO-
12-681), available at http://www.gao.gov/
products/GAO-12-681
Chris Kraft, CGFM,
PMP, PMI-ACP,
CSM is a project
manager at the U.S.
Department of the
Interior, Interior
Business Center and
a member of AGA’s
Northern Virginia
Chapter. He has almost 20 years of
experience implementing and managing
financial systems in the commercial and
public sectors. He is a PMI agile certified
practitioner and a certified scrum master.
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