Agile in government – how it works

Building GOV.UK required a significant shift in culture and working practices.

From waterfall to agile

Historically, the government approach to developing and delivering services followed the waterfall method:

Services were driven by particular policies, business requirements and constrained by heavy procurement contracts. This meant that they were:

• expensive to build
• out of date when they launched
• locked into restrictive maintenance deals that made them impossible to change

Teams were lucky if they managed to get any customer insight at the beginning of the project. They were often only able to conduct a small amount of usability testing at the end of the process, when it was already too late to have much impact or to change anything significant.

Since the introduction of GOV.UK in 2012, government services have been built in a user-centred way, using an agile framework. This means that we focus on learning about our users early on, so we can deliver the best possible services for them.

In the discovery phase, we sometimes find that we are not working strictly within a cyclical way. In this phase, we might spend more time learning about our users.

Conducting user research throughout your project means that you can ensure that you’re always:

• getting actionable insights
• learning things that help you make informed day-to-day decisions about your project
• continuing to develop a strategic understanding of your service and your users

Iterate, and then iterate again

Agile is all about working in cycles.

It is an iterative, cyclical process of researching, designing and developing, but the whole process is a learning process. By making and discarding prototypes and employing the principle of “failing fast”, we learn more about what works and what does not work. “Failing fast” means not being afraid to make mistakes, because making mistakes and correcting them is part of how we learn.

By working with users, user researchers help teams learn about their users and understand their needs. They are involved throughout this cyclical learning process.

Task

Think about different types of projects – developing software, constructing a building, creating an advertising campaign, organising an event, or whatever else you can think of.

Are there situations that might be more suited to waterfall, agile, or a different project management methodology altogether? Can you think of advantages and drawbacks for these methodologies?

Share your thoughts in the comments below.