Uncle Sam's Recipe for Agile Product Management
The cards are stacked against Agile teams succeeding in government. From misaligned governance, perverse incentive structures, and legal constraints, real Agile shouldn't work at all. Yet it is happening, for some teams, by pairing up private-sector product techniques with courageous public-sector domain expertise.
This talk will give a detailed look into the Federal government's 18F product team methods to support this change: mapping out a vision with stakeholders, crafting the strategy and roadmap, partner coaching, and citizen-centered design. It will show how these methods are working with state partners and pose some open challenges.
You will leave this talk appreciating what is going on behind the scenes in government and with an integrated theory for bottom-up Agile change in large organizations.
Outline/Structure of the Talk
0:00 Intro about Impossible change
0:05 Ways the deck is stacked against Agile in government
0:10 Model of change: huge disaster, start small in every way, scale up.
Change that is, above all, sustainable.
Pair and fade
0:20 Mapping out a vision with stakeholders
Crafting the strategy and roadmap
0:30 Partner coaching
Citizen-centered design
Other key ingredients like open source and Dev Ops
0:40 Some things we've changed in our approach and why
Ways we have modified our surrounding structures (governance)
0:50 Wrap-up and questions!
(Apologies, no slides available yet, as this is new!)
Learning Outcome
- Concrete techniques and resources for vision-setting and roadmapping with stakeholders
- Approaches for very slow transformation
- Appreciation of what it takes to make progress in a worst-case scenario for Agile teams
Target Audience
Agile leaders, change agents, and curious Americans
Prerequisites for Attendees
Nothing
Links
https://product-guide.18f.gov