Agile in the Federal Government
CNA has extensive experience working alongside our clients to support successful Agile programs throughout the full project lifecycle. We help our clients identify the capabilities—enabled by business processes, operations, systems, and data—needed to accomplish their mission. Then we translate these needs into technical requirements and specifications captured in Agile epics and user stories for the development teams.
Throughout development, we use proven systems engineering, architecture, and design practices to ensure that the solution is developed properly and validated to meet operational needs. As a non-profit organization dedicated to the success of government programs, we can provide objective insights with no conflict of interest.
The articles below outline key insights and recommendations we’ve gathered through our first-hand experience with Agile in the federal government. Each article addresses a unique agile challenge and provides recommendations tailored to the government realm. For more information, please contact us at ESDA@cna.org or call 703-862-4461.
Eliciting User Needs: Developing Themes for an Agile Project
Identify user needs to create high-level themes which guide acquisition documentation and decompose into epics and user stories during development.
Requirements Management
Requirements Management Plan for an agile project describes the processes for conducting user research, developing epics and stories from themes, defining user stories with acceptance criteria, validating story implementation, and communicating requirements to stakeholders.
Monitoring the Health of Agile Projects
Agile requires unique metrics to measure project health, and understanding these metrics early-on is critical to ensuring that the project is monitoring the necessary parameters.
Procuring Agile Development Support
Successful agile software development begins with procurement practices that will support agile processes.