Agile at OPM

1. Agile at the
Office Of
Personnel
Management
(A True Story)

2. Richard Cheng
 Agile trainer & coach
 Excella Agile Center of Excellence Lead
 Member of Scrum Alliance, Agile Alliance,
Agile Leadership Network, PMI
 CST, CSM, CSPO, CSP, PMI-ACP, PMP
 Founder & executive committee member
of Agile Defense Adoption Proponents
Team (ADAPT), the Agile DoD Task Force
 Deep expertise in Federal, commercial,
and non-profit Agile transformations

3. David Neumann
 Role @ DOL
 Accreditations

4. Objectives
 Demonstrate how Agile brought success to OPM’s
Retirement Systems Modernization (RSM) data
program
 Discuss challenges with Agile in the Federal
government
 Interactive

5. History - Retirement System
Modernization (RSM)
 As is – paper based Federal retirement system and
infrastructure
 To be – electronic online system called RetireEZ
 Used traditional requirements, design, implement, and
test cycles to develop the system
 Testing phases uncovered serious issues
 Issues eventually resulted in a mutual agreement by
OPM and the vendor to terminate the RetireEZ contract

6. Agile Solution
 Identify the value
 Communication & Collaboration
 Iterative delivery

7. Identify the Value
Previous efforts tried to do a lot:

8. Identify the Value

9. Agile Solution
 Identify the value
 Communication & Collaboration
 Iterative delivery

10. Top Down COTS vs
Bottom Up Custom
COTS
• Executives
• PM / Governance
• Vendor
• Date Driven
Custom
• SMEs
• Policy
• Legal Requirements
• Regulations
• Scope Driven

11. Source of Requirements
Retirement System
OPM Adjudicator
External Data Providers
Daily meetings with individual data providers
Twice a week meetings with internal
SMES
SMEs understand retirement process
Shifted focus from telling SMEs how the
system works to understanding their needs
SSC's need to know data to send
Shifted focus from gathering requirements
to confirming requirements

12. Communication and
Collaboration
Previous solutions – the requirements and the data has to fit the system
New solution – the system has to fit the requirements and the data
 Working closely with the SMEs to understand their needs
 Understanding true data and program needs
 Building collaborative relationship
 SMEs vested in program
 SMEs identified with the team and attended the SSC meetings as part of the team

13. Agile Solution
 Identify the value
 Communication & Collaboration
 Iterative delivery

14. RSM Data Project
PMs
BA Dev
The Scrum Team
PMO
SMEs

15. Timeline
 In a two week sprint, our planning takes one day.
 Thus our planning period is 10% of our overall timeline.
 Extremely short (by industry standards) and effective
M T W TH F
Planning SME Meeting SME Meeting
SME Meeting SME Meeting
Planning

16. 1. Sprint
Backlog
Planning
2. Sprint
Backlog
Review
3. Sprint
Tasking
4. Execution
5. Sprint
Retrospective
4. Sprint
Closing

17. Process Workflow Overview
1. Sprint Backlog Planning
The business decides and prioritizes features they want ….
2. Sprint Backlog Review
Team estimates and commits to features ….
3. Sprint Tasking
Team determines how to implement features ….
4. Execution
Team performs the work ….
5. Sprint Closing
Team reviews completed work ….
6. Sprint Retrospective
Team improves process ….

18. Results
Shifted focus from writing about how we’re going to write the
feed specifications, to actually developing the feed
specifications
Published the Guide to Retirement Data Reporting
 Delivered a real-world working solution vetted by
external and internal Federal retirement SMEs
 OPM piloting additional Agile projects

19. Challenges -
Governance
 Governance
 PMO addressed most of the governance issues
 Status reports easier because we had real time data
 EVM largest challenge
 EVM is not inherently anti-Agile, issues are with
implementations of EVM
 Phase based on a waterfall SDLC
 Not being able to change line items
 Measurement of value

20. Agile EVM
Req
Design
Dev
Release
QA
EVM Timeline
Development
Requirements
EVM Timeline
To this….
Requirements
Development
From this to this…
EVM Timeline

21. Challenges
 Misconceptions
 Funding / Procurement
 Politics

22. Agile and Federal Contracts
Agile Projects
Iteration 1 Iteration 2 Iteration 3 …..
BPA / IDIQ
Task Order
1
Task Order
2
Task Order
3
…..

23. 2. The top features ready for
delivery
1600
1400
1200
1000
800
600
400
200
0
Work Completed
Work Remaining
Project Due Date

24. Fixed Date / Fixed Scope
 Outcomes of Fixed Date / Fixed Scope projects:
 Waterfall
1. Delivered on time and working as expected
2. “Delivered” on time … with issues
3. Cannot deliver on time, need to extend
 Scrum
1. Delivered on time and working as expected
2. The highest valued stories are delivered by the requested date
and working as expected
 Do not sacrifice quality to meet dates

25. OPM Current State
 Despite recent press, focused iterative delivery
produces results
 Electronic data standards defined and published
 Next steps data viewer is the “future of the solution”
 OPM Agile evolution
 USAJOBS
 USA Staffing
 Agile expansion

26. Mr. Kenneth Zawodney in statements before Congress*:
How Agile has helped:
“..Modernize our IT infrastructure incrementally, employing a cost effective and
efficient modular approach to transition away from paper and into the modern
era…”
Results:
• “…Establishing the capability of gathering electronic data..”
• “…In 2012, we launched the Data Viewer…”
• “..11 agencies are in a pilot for the Data Viewer..”
• “..Continue to deploy the Data Viewer to all agencies within the Federal
government…”
*http://oversight.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Mr.-ZAWODNY-Testimony.pdf

27. Contact Information
Richard K Cheng
richard.cheng@excella.com
703-967-8620
http://www.excella.com
Twitter: @RichardKCheng