18f / agile

Agile Principles and Practice, documented by the 18F Agile Guild

⚠️ This guide has moved to the consolidated 18F guides repository.

TTS Agile Guild

The Technology Transformation Service (TTS) Agile Guild is a community that fosters agile methodologies within government. For more on the guild, please see our documentation.

The guild meets every other Fridays from 2:00-2:30 ET. For a link to the meeting, please consult the TTS Guilds Meetings and Office Hours calendar

Agile guide

The guild publishes an agile guide that is based on experience on 18F project teams and invdividuals inside and outside of government with experience in agile disciplines.

This should be considered a work in progress. We welcome pull requests and discussion via GitHub issues. Please refer to our documentation and contribution guidelines.

License

The project is in the public domain, and all contributions to it will be released as such. For more details see TERMS

If you contribute the open source work of others, please mark it clearly in your pull request.

cloud.gov Pages

This site is now on cloud.gov Pages. See settings > Webhooks for details.

agile's Issues

Increased attendance at guild meetings

See if folks know how to find us
Guild invitations can be tricky
Invite folks directly?

Let TTS know we are here
Reach out to OPP, Acq., PIF, etc. leads
Reach out to people, grow membership
Reach out to every new hire
Reach out to all new hires from last 365 days

AgileBPA journal for first award

We want to know how our first award project under the AgileBPA goes so we can learn and improve.

Partner update

Roundtables/lessons learned/checking in
How agile is going in our agency
“X months later” after an engagement with a partner, where is Agile?
Listen/give feedback?

Ceremonies, especially in government

508 Issues from pa11y-rails

Results can be recreated using HTML_CodeSniffer

Results for https://pages.18f.gov/agile/

• Error This element has insufficient contrast at this conformance level. Expected a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1, but text in this element has a contrast ratio of 3.95:1. Recommendation: change text colour to #0069be.
  • WCAG2AA.Principle1.Guideline1_4.1_4_3.G18.Fail
  • #repositories > ul > li:nth-child(2) > a > h4
  • <h4>agile</h4>
• Error This element has insufficient contrast at this conformance level. Expected a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1, but text in this element has a contrast ratio of 3.95:1. Recommendation: change text colour to #0069be.
  • WCAG2AA.Principle1.Guideline1_4.1_4_3.G18.Fail
  • #repositories > ul > li:nth-child(2) > a > p
  • <p>Main repository</p>

Summary

Errors: 2

Office hours

What we're after:

• Deepen communities of practice

From #wg-dataservices:
for our regular working group meeting today, I think I’d like to try conducting as an office hours, where folks can bring up questions or issues they want to discuss. I know that several other working groups hold their regular meetings this way so I thought we’d give it a try. Drop in at 3:00 PM EDT if you want to raise a question or chat about a data topic.

Notes from 10/19 guild meeting:

• Considering doing these close to where the work is happening, help people with their work
• Help people in focused way – "I have this issue, looking for help"
• How will people know it’s agile-related? Give a problem-oriented framing.

Todos

• Ryan to draft language
• Ryan Send out invite on Dec 12

FEC Case Study for Agile Design

Completed by Noah Manger: https://docs.google.com/a/gsa.gov/document/d/1Ub9-we3XLM4RDGc95WhFjBk0Gwq0viZS2SS4kKnAQfM/edit?usp=sharing

Write document with agile progress so far

To include:

• Agile guild history
• Agile design
• Agile contracting

Draft: https://docs.google.com/document/d/16xOD3ImpIataUo9js5Q7JVVhlMBhmCaI-2YXE3AglI4/edit

Provide opportunities for training/shadowing

We believe that:
Providing opportunities for training/shadowing (ie, Alan Atlas’ agile acquisition workshop; shadowing vendor agile meetings)

Will result in:
The ability to scale agile contracts by hosting more expectation-setting and agile training kickoff meetings
Cross-18F learning on how to set up projects, internal and external, for iterative success
Contracts with outside vendors that deliver on outcomes rather than requirements
Contracts that are consistent with open source, user-centered design and agile

We will know we are right when:
We’ve delivered a user-centered, outcomes-oriented project with vendor support
Vendors report happier interactions working with government
Agencies report happier interactions working with vendors
18F projects report more consistent and successful agile practices across the org

Shared best practices with other guild leaders

DevOps
Accessibility
Others

Create agile health survey

In our Jun 17 guild meeting, Robb suggested creating a very lightweight survey to measure agile health across the org based on an approach in Practices of an Agile Developer.

It has "how you know you're doing it right" with a "feels like" section. Much of it is not developer-centric so it would be good for the whole org. We could take a few of the "feels" from the book and use a simple scale. The book also already has suggested solutions for issues, super helpful.

Agile Contracting

BDD

Nice article about coordinating product behavior among cooperating teams with BDD as a building block. One step higher up the abstraction ladder than agreeing on openapi specs!
https://johnfergusonsmart.com/bdd-treaties/

Test Epic

test

10x submission

Guilds may propose projects via 10X and other avenues, which would then receive budget if approved.

Ideas:

• Agile Guild notes on Agile Industrial Complex
  https://docs.google.com/document/d/1pbq7swca7DRUygJFL6ovYpcTl6Rep6ABOQFN4IZSa5g/edit#heading=h.un9hcm4iand

Strengthen connections with other communities of practice

Agile Community of Practice
How to help organize/contribute (GAO, OMB), has about 200 people
https://digital.gov/communities/agile-lean/
https://www.agilegovleaders.org/agl-establishes-non-profit-association-serve-government-innovation-community/

Update favicon for the Agile Guide

Update repository readme to include information around the agile guild rather than just the agile guide.

We want to use this repository to also host information about the guild. However, currently the readme points directly to just information/content used to power the agile guide (agile.18f.gov).

Update the Readme to include guild information.

• Understand how to ensure builds do not include guide markdown content in this repo
• Create a space for guild information
• Update README to point readers to appropriate areas (guild info vs. agile guide)

Move to 18F Pages Style

It looks like this repo isn't using the style of other guides (like having a link to the repo in the footer). Unsure how to fix, but wanted to flag.

Agile Design

Epic to track issues around ensuring Design practices and Agile practices work well together at 18F

logo img is broken

Documented purposes and priorities

We should put this stuff in the repo so folks can access it.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1C1PMc5IKrOSjYon9eE0vfVciDQF7utuVrAibLAfB7vs/edit#

EITI Case Study for Agile Design

FY Q4 (Jul-Sep) guild bulletin

Send out once every couple months/quarter
Talking points

We have good discussion in meetings but don’t necessarily communicate out what we learned/discussed
Help others benefit from that discussion
Send out once every couple months/quarter
Talking points
Helpful to recruit folks to meeting, potentially - market/publicize
Can point to resources/artifacts – here are some things we used, this is what we discussed
Good to be short – just a few lines from each meeting
Send out once every couple months/quarter

Writing Lab issue:
https://github.com/18F/writing-lab/issues/405

Quarterly guild retro and/or pulse survey

So we know how we're doing...

Conduct quarterly pulse survey to see how we’re doing
NEO one is good
Retro at some regular cadence?

What are we doing here? What do you want out of this?
How are we doing?
Check in with Alan Atlas, Bret

Define a success metric for agile contracts vs. old SOWs

We believe that:
Defining a success metric for agile contracts vs. old SOWs

Will:
Make it easier to evangelize agile practice across government

We will know we are right when:
We see other parts of government using our articles and outreach on this topic as fodder for moving to a more agile way of working

Review draft blogpost on agile acquisitions

Review Mark’s draft blogpost: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1oqz_trmAB17TVwG21z6TywVxFZ8jqYWsI7sf4E-o1g8/edit

Our first AgileBPA contract is about done now, let’s see how it went!

Next steps for success metrics for new contract type

• Check in with Andrew M. – is he working on this already?
• Idea: Successful deliveries on the new contract type vs. old contract type

TTS State of Agile 2019

What about doing our own report?

https://gsa-tts.slack.com/archives/C03JN1M6S/p1525964097000673
https://explore.versionone.com/state-of-agile

a test for if an agency stakeholder is really willing to do agile

Some suggested language:

Agile projects are goal-driven, not feature-driven. You must be willing to articulate a goal that is written in terms of outcomes for the users of the service, then establish a way to measure whether a service meets the goal and guage the success of the product based on qualitative and quantitative assesment of whether that goal is met. You must be willing to have a subset of your target audience use the product before it is ready, and agree that such as process is the only true way of assessing readiness.

Documenting agile contracting learning

We believe that:

• Staying in touch with Alan A, Andrew M and acquisition team members’ synthesis work on what’s yielding results in agile contracting, and helping to amplify their work
• Making sure acquisitions learnings are documented in agile guild guides
• Updating the agile guide to talk about contracting so that 18F understands contracting as connected to our ability to practice agile, aka what is an agile project in government from start to finish

Will result in:

• Cross-18F learning on how to set up projects, internal and external, for iterative success
• Contracts with outside vendors that deliver on outcomes rather than requirements
• Contracts that are consistent with open source, user-centered design and agile
• Better cross-government understanding about agile acquisitions

We will know we are right when:

• We’ve delivered a user-centered, outcomes-oriented project with vendor support
• Vendors report happier interactions working with government
• Agencies report happier interactions working with vendors
• We hear that this documentation is helpful from other government agencies, and see it being used elsewhere

Trainings

What we're after:
(who are users?)
(what is demand?)

Guild develop content to help deliver training
Point training materials back to Agile Guild materials
These developed outside of the guild originally
Check in, see if they’d like to tie some of what they present back

Things we can try:

• Probe more at demand, send Slack poll (capabilities, trainings)
• Review what else we've done (Agile Corps, DigitalGov)
• Recordings of Agile 101, Agile 102 (Alan A., Alan B.)

Let guild members know about RFP review opportunity

RFPs on GitHub
Here’s the fedramp dashboard RFQ… https://github.com/18F/bpa-fedramp-dashboard
Are more coming down the pike?

DAP integrated

per #49 (comment), understanding the traffic to the site can help inform future development and maintenance of this site.

Story

As agile.gov Admin,
I want to understand traffic patterns on the site
So I can make more informed decisions regarding the website as a product.

Acceptance

• Given a user visits agile.18f.gov, then I can see a real-time user in Analytics.

Develop OKRs

Do this based on #26.

Discussion: Scaling Agile

What we're after:

• Our community has expressed interest in this, particularly expression curiosity about agencies using SAFe. Partner may have mentioned SAFe, may have needs to scale agile
• Exposure for guild
• Could give us content, something to memorialize (not seeing much recently, older cloud.gov, maybe FEC)
• We want to steer away from discussing specifically SAFe, rather agility at scale

Some smaller chunks we could look at:

• Agile program management
• Multiple vendors, multiple teams (what are the good things that seem to work, SAFe, LeSS, DAD)
• Step 0 in scaling
  -- Learning how to avoid it
  -- Steve Denning (Andrew to follow up)
• DA Decision framework

Possible formats:

• Training
• Coaching
• Unconference / open space : virtually
• Failures – when does agile at scale go bad?

Possible people who can represent:

• Bret, Alan A., Cata, Hopson indicated interest
• Prisby or someone else from Login.gov
• Porta's experience with scaled projects

People we can speak to about ideas:

• Uchenna (Porta to check)

Maybe/later:

• Federalist (Eddie)

Notes/other considerations

• Marketing
• yeah that SAFe one i think would make a good “marquee” agile guild event
• Good to have other members contribute
• Solicit questions beforehand
• Memorialize somehow

More context here:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/11w5VA-PY-KuBx7sLBJyjDdAnuTQPGR9otx9eRjTyYtQ/edit#heading=h.wpfgksukm3w4

Identify a ‘synthesis/documentation owner’ who can keep in touch on documentation

Situational Awareness 101 presentation

Sync up with AcqStack research team

Sync up with Andrew on related research

• Has Andrew done this already: looking at all contracts (ask Pivotal for a copy of their contract, also check with CPS), and reviewing Jessie P’s current contracting experience
• Private industry who have been successful in building businesses around agile contracts (since back in the day, they moved to agile, just like us)
• List examples of agile contracts to help 18F understand what these look like and that they don’t look like

Case Study - Micropurchase

move charter to github

there's no real reason our charter needs to be private, we should consider including it in this repo... maybe as part of the readme

Guest speaker approach

What are we after:

• Deepen collective learning, inspiration
• Potentially increase attendance (esp. other parts of TTS aside from 18F)
• Chance to talk to people about our challenges
• Help give folks opportunity to talk internally to support eventual external speaking. Tap our internal wisdom

Possible formats:

• Presentation
• Fishbowl discussion

Topics:

• DevOps (do something w/DevOps guild)

Speakers:

• Could be external or internal

Who has spoken before:

• S. Andrews
• Simon Wardley

Cadence:

• Thinking every 1-2 months to start, depending on availability

Implementation steps:

• Reach out to @vicuk to see if we can learn about what strategy has been doing, what's been working for them
• Check to see what topics/people might be useful with team (via Mural):
  (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1rMRJa1YJI4YHPUcKJDNbMkFYocMJw3R_0T6FnXiPiD0/edit)
• Create a scheduling spreadsheet with folks we want to contact and available speaking slots
• Draft outreach email copy

Fix "Edit this Page" link

broken link:

More visible agile guide

The guide was meant to be light initially with contributions or issues submitted to understand what are the most pressing questions we face regarding agile in government.

The agile guide is currently linked to the 18F guides page, but not much else. There have not been much submissions so how can we promote the guide better?

Note: A good first step would be to integrate DAP so that we can see just how much traffic there is.

New Agile Guild lead

What we're after:

• So we can continue our guild leadership, we want to find a replacement for @porta-antiporta :pour-one-out:

Implementation steps:

• Set up Google Form
• Solicit nominations
• Notify nominees of nomination, check interest in interviewing
• Schedule/conduct interviews
• Confer and select lead (Andrew/Porta)
• Notify all nominees
• Announce to TTS!

Notice and Comment Case Study

Perform a notice and comment case study for #wg-agiledesign.

• Interview Will Sullivan (PM)
• Interview Jen Ehlers and Jon Donmoyer
• Write up notes for case study into readable format

Review RFPs in GitHub

We believe that:
Agile guild members staying in the loop with acquisitions by reviewing RFPs in GitHub

Will result in:
Cross-18F learning on how to set up projects, internal and external, for iterative success
Contracts with outside vendors that deliver on outcomes rather than requirements
Contracts that are consistent with open source, user-centered design and agile

We will know we are right when:
Agile guild members report that this is a useful exercise
Team Acquisitions reports value from the review
18F team members report feeling more sure about how to review project plans and provide critique for agile success

Identify someone to sort out training process

Set a process for connecting guild members with training/shadowing AgileBPA workshops/meetings.

Article/post/book club

Non-SAFe approaches to agile-at-scale