Improving how we support our Warfighters, an Agile perspective

 I attended the APBI event that was hosted at Aberdeen Proving Grounds (APG).  It was an information laden event that was well-organized by SBA and the Army.  At the event I met several government officials and leaders of organizations that support the Army in current and possibly future contracting efforts.  Through the discussions and presentations there were two overarching messages: 1) the need to provide the best solutions to support the Warfighter and 2) continued budget cuts.  Some view these two messages as polar in nature and it had most attendees saying “how can we provide the latest and greatest solutions for our Warfighters with less funding?” Yes, on the surface these messages seem to collide and be contra intuitive; however, the mantra of doing more with less (which is essentially the reality in the Army contracting sector given the budget cuts) is daily fare in the commercial environment.  My career has been primarily entrenched in the commercial space in CIO, CTO, and Director roles, which provides me with a much different perspective of the deliver more with less problem domain.  It goes without saying that in many cases the commercial sector can be less bureaucratic; nevertheless, it is fraught with challenges that do not exist in the public sector.  Yes the stakeholders are different, the players are different, the ebbs and flows are different, but the mission is the same: deliver products, services, and value to our customers on-time, on-budget, and meet/exceed expectations.  The who, what, when, where, why, and how change with what is being delivered but the mission remains steadfast.  

Regardless of industry there isn’t a mission greater than supporting our Warfighters that provide the very freedom the United States embraces and celebrates. So how do we provide products and solutions for our Warfighters that will enable our men and women in uniform to return from the battlefield safely in the face of increasing budget cuts?  This is the question that not only needs to be answered; it creates an environment that requires us to conquer the deliver more with less quagmire.  This means looking at the entire contracting and acquisition process concurrently with how we produce products and deliver services.  So how do we do it?  Agile methods. 

Agile methodologies provide the framework for being able to deliver more with less.  This is not about a broad brush application of the framework to simply increase productivity it’s about delivering the “right” solutions faster, more reliably, and with less capital expenditure that can be implemented and provide real value.  We don’t have to look much further than any periodical or news program the past few months related healthcare.gov to see a shining beacon of what NOT to do.  It is has become by far the most titanic government IT failure of the past two decades. It certainly has not provided the right solution, there has been nothing fast about it, it’s certainly not reliable, and the capital expenditure is exponentially off the charts.  There were zero Agile methods applied to this process, so let’s not relive those mistakes in our efforts to support the Warfighter. 

After the week long APBI, there are two initial problems that need to be addressed to move down the Agile path in an effort to become better equipped to support our Warfighters, which are:

1. Defining Agile methods correctly so we have a shared understanding of Agile principles and practices.
2. Shifting our mental models as it relates to management philosophies.

The first problem was brought to the vanguard in my conversations with various leaders in both the public and private sectors.  They are all using the word Agile and trying to shoehorn this term into a wide-array of scenarios.  When I asked what Agile means to them from a software development or process perspective, the definitions and utility of these methods widely differed.  This brings me to the first issue; everyone does not have a proper understanding of Agile or the various constructs that constitute this framework (in particular Scrum).  When they referenced software development, each individual described an incarnation of Scrummerfall, trying to insert pieces of Scrum into a Waterfall delivery method. This historically is a way to guarantee failure in any environment. 

The second problem will be a challenging uphill mental model shift for those who covet the Taylorian, McGregor Theory X, or other authoritarian management philosophies.  These management styles do not work in a post-industrial society with knowledge workers; it stymies innovation, productivity, and creativity.  We have to learn from the past and recognize that having a corporate culture that exercises these archaic principles will have a deleterious impact on our ability to deliver best-of-breed solutions for our Warfighters. 

We need to move toward understanding Agile methods, applying them properly, and creating a workplace that fosters the inspiration and ingenuity of our workforce.  Until we do we will continue to be plagued with the question that was ubiquitous at the APBI event, “How can we provide the latest and greatest solutions for our Warfighters with less funding?”  We are the greatest nation in the world and we need to bring the proved methods from the private sector to the public sector to deliver top-tier solutions for our Warfighters.