- In response to Tweet from Tim Swift: https://twitter.com/TimSwift/status/328501366186180608
- See http://cartesianproduct.wordpress.com/2013/04/28/universal-credit-death-march-goes-on/
I believe that Agile is just as safe as Waterfall. Nuclear Reactors, etc may use Waterfall methodologies, but it's Formal methods that make them safe. You'd think Waterfall would be safer for development because everything is always having to be signed off, but really - it's not. BTW - Formal methods are hideously expensive and are probably overkill for this type of project.
At it's heart, any kind of Social Security system is not complex.
10 For every person in the system.
20 Benefit = Person + Situation.
30 Loop
There are issues with data security, size and privacy though. These issues are a concern for those people working in Agile Government Systems at the moment, but I think it's important to not confuse the more open nature of Agile Development (where honesty and openness are virtues) with more traditional Government projects where Huge contracted companies promise the earth, charge a fortune and deliver little of value.
Have you seen http://gov.uk ? That's what an Agile methodology gives you. Exceptional quality delivered at a fraction of the price providing a government service that's streets ahead of any prior projects.
The linked article confuses different kinds of testing. Agile methodologies tend towards something called Test Driven Development. This is useful for building something and quickly iterating that thing, but has no impact on how that thing is rolled out. Implying that a limited rollout proves it has somehow not been tested properly is nonsensical as a statement.
Limited Rollouts are however used frequently by super large web projects. Twitter, Facebook and Google all use them.
In my opinion, the big corporates are currently terrified after the success of http://gov.uk, and they'll co-opt, use, do or say anything in order to discredit any further government projects that try anything similar. I'd regard with extreme suspicion any articles in this area.
Agile as a methodology needs for all actors within the project to be acting in good faith towards a shared goal. If anything is going to scupper agile projects, then the politics of large government projects may do it. Waterfall ensures that everybody knows what they're delivering, and uses copious amounts of paperwork to enforce that. Agile is more communal, and less focused on apportioning blame when things go wrong. If you've scrapped your way up into a government position, then that's a hard mindset to understand.
It may politically be sound strategy to attack the current administration for how Government IT projects are being currently changed, but this is short-term thinking. Projects written by small UK based teams using Open Source libraries, where code is shared and available to all has many benefits. Teams can be more easily swapped; there's less reliance on large profit driven suppliers; skills are kept and nurtured inside the UK; the general population are more likely to get extra benefit from copylefted codebases. It all seems a bit woolly and socialist, but it only partially is. Facebook, Google & Twitter run huge for-profit sites that leverage the common shared codebases of the open source world.