Category Archives: project management

Why effective project management should focus on people, not just processes

Posted on 09/02/2012 | Leave a comment

By David Bicknell

I recently read an interesting post in the Gallup Management Journal which argued that when it comes to project management, most organisations put their practices before their people.

In other words, they place more emphasis on ‘rational’ factors, such as the process itself, and rather less on emotional drivers that could actually deliver project excellence – actually, just a project success would do! – such as their employees’ engagement with the project and company.

The piece, by Benoit Hardy-Vallee, points out that, “Project management is integral to the business world. Milestones, kickoff meetings, deliverables, stakeholders, Gantt charts, and work plans constitute the everyday world of most managers, whether they are called “project managers” or not. Given the vast experience organisations have with project management, it’s reasonable to wonder why all projects aren’t completed on time, on scope, and under budget.”

It argues that cost and time overruns on IT projects have had a profound effect on national economies, and suggests that one estimate of the IT project failure rate is between 5% and 15%, which represents a loss of $50 billion to $150 billion per year in the United States. In Europe, although the figures look pretty dated, they are still staggering in size: IT project failures  cost the European Union €142 billion in 2004.

What’s more, the piece argues, this trend is here to stay. With an ever-growing need for accessible and integrated data, organisations require larger platforms to manage supply chains, customer relationships, and dozens of other crucial systems.

“Mega-software projects are now common in private and governmental organisations, and development is not slowing down, especially in emerging economies.”

The blog argues that large projects, especially those in the IT sectors, already have a poor record. And forcing team members to adapt to project management processes and procedures only makes it more likely that the project will fail.

It goes on to suggest that a different, more powerful behaviour-based project management might be a better way of  enabling project groups to gain higher levels of emotional commitment and performance from their team members, as well as increased levels of emotional involvement from stakeholders to help improve both engagement and performance.

“A typical project management approach focuses on processes, policies, and procedures. Every task and step is described in detail by a set of rules.  Many companies implement rigid processes that dictate behaviour and use statistical methods to control quality (such as total quality management, kaizen, lean management, and Six Sigma). Process guides and rulebooks support work practices, while quality control systems assess and improve these practices.

“The problem with a single-minded focus on processes and methodologies is that once people are given procedures to follow, compliance replaces results. Everybody is concerned about how to do the job, not about the outcome if the job is done well.

“Companies that take this approach do so for valid reasons: They can’t manage what they don’t measure. More importantly, they can’t let projects run without any direction, hoping for the best. However, by relying on managing only these rational factors, organisations fail to harness the power of human nature by engaging employees’ emotions.”

The article concludes: “It’s time to update project management not with more methodologies, but with more emotional content. Employees’ and stakeholders’ disengagement can make a project fail, but behaviour-based management can make projects succeed.”

Gallup Management Journal

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Posted in Agile, BRICS, Campaign4Change, change management, Government IT, IT projects, project management

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Auditor criticises agency over IT contracts and oversight for California high speed rail project

Posted on 31/01/2012 | Leave a comment

By David Bicknell

Let’s hope that when the HS2 high speed rail link gets underway – assuming it gets the final go-ahead in 2014 – it doesn’t have the same problems over IT contracts and oversight that have recently come to light over a high speed rail project in California.

A new report by the California State Auditor on a planned high speed system between San Francisco and Los Angeles found that the $98.5bn project has suffered from a number of critical, ongoing oversight problems.

In particular, the auditor found that the High Speed Rail Authority responsible for the project has struggled to provide an appropriate level of contract oversight, because it is significantly understaffed.

As Palo Alto Online reports, “The audit paints a picture of a severely understaffed state agency that is struggling to keep track of its contractors, who outnumber the rail authority’s staff by a factor of about 25 to 1. As of last August, the authority had only 21.5 filled positions and more than 500 contractors.”

The State Auditor also found that the Authority poorly managed its IT contracts and engaged in ‘inappropriate contracting practices involving IT services.’

In addition to the initial contract, the audit report says, the Authority used 13 individual contracts for IT services over a 15-month period that ranged from $105,655 to $249,999.99 for similar services with one vendor.

Instead of multiple contracts generally having aggregate values of just under $250,000 with one vendor for similar services, the Auditor said, the Authority should have combined the services into one contract and solicited competitive bids or obtained approval to noncompetitively bid the contract.

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Posted in Campaign4Change, governance, Government IT, IT projects, oversight, project management

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BRICS countries face identity card IT project delays

Posted on 31/01/2012 | 2 comments

By David Bicknell

Two of the BRICS countries are wrestling with project management challenges as overambitious IT projects face an uncertain future.

India and Russia, which are two of the emerging so-called ‘BRICS’ – Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa – nations have implemented large identity card schemes which are now facing implementation hurdles.

In India, an ambitious biometric identification scheme for 1.2 billion people faces is likely to have to be redesigned if it is to survive.

The Asia Times says the Indian government has budgeted US$603 million to give a 12-digit number to each of 600 million residents by March 14, 2014, in the first two phases of the  project, dubbed “Aadhaar”, which means “foundation” or “support.”

The Asia Times says the Indian government had asked the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) project to enroll 200 million people by January 2012, in a first phase.

The UID number, which is set to prove identity, though not citizenship, would be supported by biometric devices such as facial recognition systems, eye and fingerprint scanners. However, a committee in the Indian Parliament has questioned its practicability and credibility.

The Standing Committee for Finance also challenged the legality, quality of technology and potential misuse of the UID information collected over the past two years.

The project had “no clarity of purpose,” observed the 48-page report from 53 parliamentarians, “and it is being implemented in a directionless way with a lot of confusion”.

It concluded: “In view of the afore-mentioned concerns and apprehensions about the UID scheme, particularly considering the contradictions and ambiguities within the Government on its implementation as well as implications, the Committee categorically convey their unacceptability of the National Identification Authority of India Bill, 2010 in its present form. The data already collected by the UIDAI may be transferred to the National Population Register (NPR), if the Government so chooses. The Committee would, thus, urge the Government to reconsider and review the UID scheme as also the proposals contained in the Bill in all its ramifications and bring forth a fresh legislation before Parliament.”

Meanwhile in Russia, according to the Moscow Times, a universal electronic card is facing delays, with a rollout scheduled for this month now being pushed to January of 2013.

The card – a combination of an electronic ID, driver’s licence, car insurance certificate, ATM card and migration document, among other possible functions – is the result of a project the government estimates will cost as much as 150 billion rubles to 170 billion rubles ($5.2 billion to $5.6 billion) to put in the hands of every citizen.

Limited initial use of the card was scheduled to take place this year, but the law that set up the project was amended in December to allow for a one-year delay.

The Moscow Times reported that the program will begin to function next year and that this year will be spent organising sites that will receive applications for the card. Application sites are expected to be set up at post offices, banks, and other locations.

A ministry spokesman confirmed that infrastructure for the project is just beginning to be created, and only four out of 83 regions having begun work on it.

“The delay in starting the project is related to issues around interagency cooperation and underdeveloped infrastructure in some regions,” said Yulia Kuchkina, a spokeswoman for the Universal Electronic Cards company (UEC). “Pilot cards are being issued — with employees of government agencies and ministries becoming the first users. In Moscow test cards have been received by employees of the Moscow Department of Information Technology,” she added.

Mail Online India: Setback for Planning Commission as Prime Minister bats for UID

Standing Committee for Finance Report

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Posted in BRICS, Campaign4Change, change management, Government IT, IT projects, procurement, project management, public sector

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Why thinking beyond ‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ might pay business dividends

Posted on 30/01/2012 | 1 comment

By David Bicknell

Most organisations in the public sector are continuing to reduce their costs. 2012 brings a continued diet of re-asserting control of costs and delivering operational savings to cope with a challenging economic landscape.

But a conversation with York-based services and solutions company Trustmarque recently raised a new phrase, and one that is perhaps blindingly obvious, and which applies to both public and private sectors: cost avoidance.

As an IT organisation it is worth asking yourself whether you really need to purchase a product or service. Can you find an alternative strategy? If you don’t have to buy something, then don’t buy it. Or find a better way of spending the money to deliver structural change that benefits the business. 

Sometimes organisations miss an opportunity to bring their technology up to date and change the way they work. Their conservative approach never drives real change.

It is vendors like Trustmarque’s role to help such organisations plan, source, deploy and manage their IT infrastructure with an end goal of reducing their costs and delivering operational savings. In Trustmarque’s case, it is a highly successful approach which just led to the company’s best-ever year and won it the Services Provider of the Year title for 2011 in the CRN Channel Awards.

It is an approach that has also worked for its customers: Plymouth City Council, by upgrading to Windows 7, tackled change by creating a more flexible, mobile way of working – and saved itself £494,000 in licensing fees.

Sometimes you have to think big to win big. And thinking in terms of ‘cost avoidance’ rather than the cliche ‘reducing costs’  – though that doesn’t necessarily mean not spending at all – and going beyond an, ‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,’ approach just might help some realise their cost goals, and at the same time, change their organisations for the better.

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Posted in Campaign4Change, change, change management, cost avoidance, Government IT, IT projects, project management, public sector, public services

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DWP defends £316m HP contract

Posted on 27/01/2012 | 1 comment

By Tony Collins

The Department for Work and Pensions could lead the public sector in technical innovations. It has had some success in cutting its IT-related costs. It has also had some success so far with Universal Credit, which is based on agile principles.

It has further launched an imaginative welfare-to-work scheme , the so-called Work Programme, which seeks to get benefit claimants into jobs they keep.

Despite media criticism of the way the scheme has been set up – especially in the FT – a report by the NAO this week made it clear that the DWP has, for the most part, taken on risks that officials understand.

Some central government departments have updated business cases as they went through a major business-change programme and not submitted the final case until years into the scheme, as in parts of the NPfIT.

But the DWP has implemented the Work Programme unusually quickly, in a little more than a year, by taking sensible risks.  The NAO report on the scheme said the business case and essential justification for the Work Programme were drawn up after key decisions had already been made. But the NAO also picked out some innovations:

– some of the Work Programme is being done manually rather than rush the IT

– suppliers get paid by results, when they secure jobs that would not have occurred without their intervention. And suppliers get more money if the former claimant stays in the job.

– the scheme is cost-justified in part on the wider non-DWP societal benefits of getting the long-term unemployed into jobs such as reduced crime and improved health.

So the DWP is not frightened of innovation. But while Universal Credit and welfare-to-work scheme are centre stage, the DWP is, behind the safety curtain, awarding big old-style contracts to the same suppliers that have monopolised government IT for decades.

Rather than lead by example and change internal ways of working – and thus take Bunyan’s steep and cragged paths – the DWP is taking the easy road.

It is making sure that HP, Accenture, IBM and CapGemini are safe in its hands. Indeed the DWP this week announced a £316m desktop deal with HP.  EDS, which HP acquired in 2008, has been a main DWP supplier for decades.

DWP responds to questions on £316m HP deal 

I put it to the DWP that the £316m HP deal was olde worlde, a big contract from a former era. These were its responses. Thank you to DWP press officer Sandra Roach who obtained the following responses from officials. A DWP spokesperson said:

“This new contract will deliver considerable financial savings and a range of modern technologies to support DWP’s strategic objectives and major initiatives such as Universal Credit.

“The DWP has nearly 100,000 staff, processing benefits and pensions, delivering services to 22 million people.

“DWP is on schedule to make savings of over £100m in this financial year for it’s Baseline IT operational costs, including the main IT contracts with BT and HPES [Hewlett Packard Enterprise Services].

“All contracts have benchmarking clauses to ensure best value for money in the marketplace.

“The five year contract was awarded through the Government Procurement framework and has been scrutinised to ensure value for money.”

My questions and the DWP’s answers:

Why has the DWP awarded HP a £316m contract when the coalition has a presumption against awarding contracts larger than £100m?

DWP spokesperson: “The Government IT Strategy says (page 10) ‘Where possible the Government will move away from large and expensive ICT projects, with a presumption that no project will be greater than £100m. Moving to smaller and more manageable projects will improve project delivery timelines and reduce the risk of project failure’.

“HM Treasury, Cabinet Office and DWP’s commercial and finance teams have scrutinised the DWP Desktop Service contract to ensure that it represents the most economically advantageous proposition.”

What is the role, if any for SMEs ?

DWP: “There are a number of SMEs whose products or services will form part of or contribute to the DWP Desktop Service being delivered by HP, for example ActivIdentity, Anixter, AppSense, Azlan, Click Stream, Cortado, Juniper Networks, Quest Software, Repliweb Inc, Scientific Computers Limited (SCL), Westcon etc.”

Why is there no mention of G-Cloud?

DWP: “Both the new contract and the new technical solution are constructed in such a way as to support full or partial moves to cloud services at DWP’s discretion.”

Comment:

For the bulk of its IT the DWP is trapped by a legacy of complexity. It is arguably too welcoming of the safety and emollients offered by its big suppliers.

The department is not frightened by risk – hence the innovative Work Programme which the NAO is to be commended on for monitoring at an early stage of the scheme. So if the DWP is willing to take on sensible risks, why does it continue to bathe its major IT suppliers in soothingly-large payments, a tradition that dates back decades? What about G-Cloud?

DWP reappoints HP on £316m desktop deal

DWP signs fifth large deal with HP

“DWP awards Accenture seven year application services deal”

“DWP awards IT deals to IBM and Capgemini”

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Posted in Agile, Campaign4Change, capacity building, change, change management, Cloud, Cloud Computing, G-Cloud, Government IT, IT projects, managing change, managing outsourced services, outsourcing, private sector lessons for the public sector, procurement, project management, public sector, public services, Real-Time Information, reducing cost strategically, reforms, supplier relationships, Universal Credit

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Halt NPfIT Cerner deployments after patient safety problems at 5 hospitals, says MP

Posted on 19/01/2012 | 2 comments

By Tony Collins

Conservative MP and member of the Public Accounts Committee Richard Bacon called today for a halt on deployments of the NPfIT Cerner Millennium system after patient safety problems at hospitals in Oxford and North Bristol.

Other hospital deployments underway include Royal Berkshire and Imperial College London.   The BBC has reported that patient-booking software at North Bristol was regarded by some consultants as ‘potentially dangerous’.

The software was installed at the Trust last month under the National Programme for IT [NPfIT].    According to a BBC Points West investigation, the implementation led to some patients missing their operations and, in other cases, the wrong patients being booked for operations.

One consultant told the BBC he had been put down to operate on patients from a completely different speciality.  Patients were also being booked for unlikely appointment times, such as five minutes past midnight, and patients were said to have turned up for phantom appointments on the New Year bank holiday.

Separately the Oxford Mail reported this week that Oxford University Hospitals NHS Trust, which includes Nuffield Orthopaedic, John Radcliffe, Churchill, and the Horton General hospitals, has difficulties booking in patients for treatment.  It deployed the Cerner Millennium software in December.

According to the Oxford Mail, some patients ringing in to book appointments waited up to an hour to have their calls answered and appointments were so delayed the Trust abandoned car parking charges for three days.

Patients reported problems that included ambulances queuing outside of A&E as staff struggled to book in patients.

Pensioner John Woodcock told the Oxford Mail that it took a week of calling the local contact centre to book an appointment for an important stomach examination.

The contact centre gives patients the option of leaving a message for staff to call back, or to join a phone queue. The 75-year-old said “I managed to get an appointment in the end by staying on the phone but it took half an hour almost.”

An Oxford University Hospitals spokesman was unable to say when the system would be able to function without delays but suggested it could be up to three months. Hospital officials blamed the disruption on deployment problems and training issues.

Bacon has long criticised the National Programme for locking the NHS into buying software that was unreliable, subject to serious delays and, even after contract renegotiations, unreasonably expensive.

He disclosed that the costs of a Cerner Millennium deployment at the North Bristol NHS Trust are about £29m over seven years. This is more than three times the reported £8.2m price of a similar system, bought outside the National Programme, at University Hospitals Bristol Foundation Trust.

Bacon said the lessons from major patient safety problems at the Royal Free Hampstead, Barts and The London and Milton Keynes General Hospital had not been learnt.

“We now have two of our leading hospitals brought to their knees by this system.  These deployments need to be stopped until we are sure that they can be managed safely.”

He added “Effective, affordable and robust IT systems are vital to the future of the NHS, but it is clear that the fiasco that is the National Programme cannot deliver them.”

One patient emailed the Oxford Mail to say that the gain will be worth the pain.

“… A word of congratulations to staff. I too had problems with booking an appointment a few days after launch, but sent an email to which I first received an answer in the form of a call-back to fix an appointment and then a personalised apology and explanation…

“Think about the time, effort and accuracy gains of an electronic records system, and not having all those sometimes thick files being ferried round the different departments; think too of the gains in patient confidentiality – now every time someone accceses your records, that will be logged.

“When things have bedded in properly, and I believe this will be sooner rather than later, if the committed and dedicated staff have anything to do with it …  we’ll soon come to be grateful, both for the increase in efficiency and the financial savings – which can then be used on frontline services…”

NPfIT Cerner go-live has “more problems than anticipated”

System still causing chaos – Oxford Mail

London trusts in chaos

 

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Posted in Campaign4Change, change management, Government IT, managing change, managing outsourced services, NHS, npfit, openness and transparency, project management, risk

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‘Penny wise and pound foolish’ to postpone IT project

Posted on 16/01/2012 | 2 comments

By David Bicknell

Sometimes you make decisions over the future of IT systems in the public sector with the best intentions – but still you can’t win. Someone, somewhere, will be unhappy.

Yesterday, I mentioned that a $92m overhaul of a Department of Revenue system in Oregon had been postponed to save money. Now, it seems,  the postponement is a bad idea that will hamper legislators’ ability to make well-informed decisions.  

“I think it is penny wise and pound foolish, if I could use an old saw,” said Vicki Berger, co-chair of the committee that oversees state taxing and revenue policy, according to the Statesman Journal. “We have to bite the bullet. We have to get a better system. We have to know better, more viable information on what impacts our revenue stream.”

Richard Devlin, co-chair of the legislature’s Joint Legislative Audits, Information Management and Technology Committee, has reportedly characterised the announcement as a “nine-month delay” rather than a cancellation of the project.

“I don’t see that as an end to the project, because the need is very real. They need to upgrade their systems, and they will continue to work to that end,” said Devlin. “I can understand the counter-argument, that you do have antiquated systems in the Department of Revenue, but I think citizens in Oregon would want when we invest in this fully that we do it right,” he continued. “I would not want to spend $92 million and then have a project that doesn’t really work.”

Comment

It’s a sign of the times that you can get such polarised views over the future of an IT project, but it’s perhaps not surprising when the project is going to cost $92m. I think the current climate is likely to see cost/benefits for IT projects become an issue for many organisations, both in the public and private sectors, but especially in the public sector.

It doesn’t necessarily mean that IT projects are at risk, simply that those making decisions on new systems/upgrades are going to need hard evidence of the real change benefits to justify any decision they make to proceed.

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Posted in Campaign4Change, Government IT, IT projects, project management, public sector, public services

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US state government and defence IT projects face uncertain future

Posted on 15/01/2012 | Leave a comment

By David Bicknell

Local newspapers in the US are offering some insight into the cloudy future of two significant IT projects.

In Salem, Oregon, a planned $92 million upgrade of the state’s Department of Revenue computer system is reportedly on hold because the state can’t afford $13 million in start-up costs.

The Register-Guard website says local officials chose to put the  project on hold rather than ask legislators to make a choice between paying for the computer system and paying for public safety and human services.

The computer system is said to be responsible for processing $7 billion a year and 94 percent of Oregon’s general fund revenue, but officials are apparently concerned about its future effectiveness.

The agency’s ability to collect taxes rests on a “myriad of disparate, aging software applications and databases,” according to a 96-page business analysis the Department of Revenue produced in 2010.

Meanwhile,  in Beavercreek, Ohio, a US Air Force computer modernisation project which has already cost $1 billion, is said to be at risk of Washington defence cuts.

US Air Force officials have acknowledged that the Expeditionary Combat Support System project, on which at least $986.5 million has been spent, won’t be completed in 2016 as had been hoped. Work began in 2007, but the local Springfield News-Sun newspaper reports that the completion date has been repeatedly postponed because of delays.

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Posted in Campaign4Change, Defence, Government IT, IT projects, project management, public sector

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US report suggests huge FISCal IT project may be ‘running into some hurdles’

Posted on 13/01/2012 | Leave a comment

By David Bicknell

A report from the US has cast doubt on the progress of a major financial system for the state of California.

CivSource suggests that the IT project,  a business transformation project for the state government in the areas of budgeting, accounting, and procurement, is “running into some hurdles. The Financial Information System for California (FISCal), was supposed to streamline IT costs and staffing but seems to be hitting snags for exactly those reasons.”

So far, CivSource says, “…the project has cost over $60 million with final costs stretching into over a billion over the next 12 years. Supporters of the system say that the state needs to spend this money in order to upgrade legacy systems and modernise processes.

“However, long term cost-estimates of the project are still up in the air. As are claims that systems will be modernised if the proposed build out lasts over a decade. Future funding is also uncertain as the state faces unprecedented rolling budget crises.”

An LA Times article previously suggested that the system was at one point $300 million over budget and three years behind schedule.  It argues that despite its Silicon Valley technology expertise, California has a poor track record of delivering successful IT projects.

In our book on IT projects, ‘Crash’, Tony Collins and I reported on the problems with the Department of Motor Vehicles project  which was cancelled in 1994 at a cost of around $50m.  $50m would be a snip compared to the financial muscle which may be needed to finally deliver FISCal.

FISCal project site

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Posted in Campaign4Change, Government IT, IT projects, project management

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Lifting the lid on Agile development within a public sector IT project

Posted on 11/01/2012 | 2 comments

By David Bicknell

It’s not often that you get an insight into the workings of Agile development within a public sector  IT project.

So the Inspector General’s report into the Sentinel IT project at the FBI that I mentioned a couple of days ago offers a rare and unique picture into how the sprints, story points etc are progressing. This will not be new to Agile exponents – but the detail below may be of interest to those unfamiliar with Agile’s processes.

Transition to an Agile Development Approach

The report’s discussion of Agile within the Sentinel project says this:

“Agile software development is not a set of tools or a single methodology, but an approach that leverages close collaboration between representatives of system users, system developers, and testers to deliver functionality in a compressed timeframe and on a continuous basis. The delivery of working software is the primary measure of progress, and satisfying customers through the delivery of valuable software is treated as the highest priority during development.

“While an Agile methodology can be implemented in a variety of ways, the FBI is implementing a variation called Scrum, an iterative methodology which breaks the development effort into increments called sprints, each of which the FBI decided would last 2 weeks.

“At the conclusion of each sprint, User Stories – functions that a system user would typically perform – along with Architecture Stories – qualities that define the system software architecture and configuration – are planned and completed, and it is the successful completion of these stories that is measured as progress for the project.”

Development Progress

“As of August 26, 2011, the FBI had completed 22 of 24 planned sprints. Under the Scrum approach, a project’s progress and amount of work remaining is measured using a burndown chart, which depicts how factors such as the rate at which a development team completes work (a team’s velocity) and changes in a project’s scope affect its likelihood of staying on schedule and within budget over time.

“This information can be used by project management and project stakeholders to estimate the duration of the project or the amount of work that can be completed within an identified amount of time.

“During the first 22 sprints (Sprint 0 through Sprint 21), the FBI had completed 1,545 of the 3,093 story points (1,548 remaining) that it identified at the beginning of the project, or about 50 percent.  As of December 2, 2011, the FBI reported that it had completed 28 of 33 planned sprints ….It had also completed 2,345 story points  – 748 remained to be completed.”

Velocity

The Report says this of the Agile team’s velocity:

“According to FBI officials, after five sprints have been completed, the velocity, or rate at which an Agile team completes story points, can be used to project the completion rate of future work. During Sprints 5 through 21, the Sentinel team’s average velocity was 80 story points per sprint.

“During our review, we estimated that if the team’s velocity remained at 80 story points per sprint, the FBI would complete about 55 percent of the intended functionality by the end of the project’s originally planned 24 sprints on September 23, 2011. At that rate of development we estimated that Sentinel will be completed in June 2012.

“On September 6, 2011, the FBI CIO stated that the FBI had added six development sprints to Sentinel’s development schedule and that the FBI then planned to end development on December 16, 2011, after 30 sprints. After development ended, the FBI planned to test Sentinel for about 6 weeks and then deploy the system to all users in January 2012. During the additional development sprints, the FBI planned to finish the functionality work that it previously planned to complete by September 23, 2011.

“Based on the average velocity of 80 story points per sprint, and the number of remaining story points to be completed (1,548) we estimated that the FBI would complete about 71 percent of the intended functionality by the end of the project’s 30 development sprints on December 16, 2011.

“On December 1, 2011, the FBI again extended the schedule for the completion of Sentinel. The CTO stated that the FBI had added four development sprints to Sentinel’s development schedule and that the FBI now plans to end development in February 2012, after 34 sprints. After development, the FBI plans to test Sentinel for about 12 weeks and then deploy the system to all users in May 2012. During this testing period, the FBI plans to test Sentinel’s hardware and execute a test of all major Sentinel functionality that will involve personnel from across the FBI.

“Also in December 2011, after the FBI received a copy of our draft report, the FBI reported to us that during Sprints 5 through 28 it had completed 2,167 story points, an average of 90 story points per sprint – 10 more story points than its average rate as of September 2011.

“Based on this average velocity and the number of remaining story points to be completed (748) during the final 5 sprints under this plan, the Sentinel team must increase its average velocity to approximately 150 story points per sprint.

“However, the six sprints between the end of development and deployment – during which the FBI will test Sentinel – could also have story points assigned to them that the FBI is not accounting for at this time, and as a result the total number of story points to complete the project could increase. Without including such an increase, the FBI would need to average about 68 story points per sprint over the total 11 sprints remaining before the planned May 2012 deployment.”

Sentinel Agile Development Approach

The report’s Appendix says this about the FBI’s approach to its Agile development for Sentinel:

“In October 2010 the FBI identified a total of 670 stories for the Sentinel Product Backlog, or the compilation of all of the project’s stories. The FBI has mapped the Product Backlog to each of the requirements in Sentinel’s Systems Requirements Specification (SRS), which serves as an important control to ensure that the backlog, and the stories it contains, cover all of Sentinel’s requirements. The FBI also assigned weighted amounts, or “story points,” to each story in the Product Backlog based on the difficulty of the work associated with each story. The FBI assigned a total of 3,093 story points to its 670 stories in the Sentinel Product Backlog.”

The Report’s Conclusion

Although it appears that the FBI has made good progress with its Agile development, adopting Agile may not be enough to get the project exactly on track, with some testing issues and hardware problems discussed in the report.

“It is too early to judge whether the FBI’s Agile development of Sentinel will meet its newly revised budget and completion goals and the needs of FBI agents and analysts.

“While the Sentinel Advisory Group responded positively to the version of Sentinel it tested, results from wider testing were not as positive. Also, none of the Agile-developed Sentinel has been deployed to all users to give them the ability to enter actual case data and assist FBI agents and analysts in more efficiently performing their jobs.

“Despite the FBI’s self-reported progress in developing Sentinel, we are concerned that the FBI is not documenting that the functionality developed during each sprint has met the FBI’s acceptance criteria. Our concerns about the lack of transparency of Sentinel’s progress are magnified by the apparent lack of comprehensive and timely system testing.

“Our concerns about the lack of transparency also extend to Sentinel’s cooperation with internal and external oversight entities, to which Sentinel did not provide the necessary system documentation for them to perform their critical oversight and reporting functions.

“We believe that this issue could be resolved, at least in part, with a revision to the FBI’s Life Cycle Management Directive to include standards for Agile development methodologies.

“….Sentinel experienced significant performance problems during the Sentinel Functional Exercise. The FBI attributed these performance problems to either the system architecture or the computer hardware.

“According to the FBI, subsequent operational testing confirmed the inadequacy of the legacy hardware and the requirement to significantly expand the infrastructure before the system could be deployed to all users. In November 2011, the FBI requested that Lockheed Martin provide a cost proposal for this additional hardware.”

The FBI’s Response

In its response to the report, the FBI says:

 “….we are mindful of the short delay we have recently encountered under our new” Agile” approach. The Sentinel development schedule has recently been extended by two months (from December 2011 to February 2012), and the FBI-wide deployment is now scheduled for May 2012, as described in this Report.

“This modest extension is due primarily to the need to implement a standard  five-year “refresh” of computer hardware, so the Sentinel software will provide the required functionality as intended. Indeed, you have determined that, given the pace at which the program has proceeded under the Agile approach over the time period you reviewed, your estimate for completion is essentially the same – June 2012.

“We have one concern with the current draft of the Report. We request that you note that the hardware we are acquiring for the refresh, which is being purchased using fiscal year 2012 operations and maintenance funds, is separate from the development activities being carried out by the Agile team under the development budget.

“The refresh is part of the normal and expected operations and maintenance activities of the FBI, and such a refresh is a common maintenance activity where hardware has reached its expected replacement threshold. We do not agree that the FBI is using operations and maintenance funds for the development of Sentinel…and we ask that you make this revision.”

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