Is Agile the Prescription for the Public Sector’s IT Woes?

Information technology (IT) projects are notorious for exceeding budget and schedule estimates, and high visibility failures are common. IT projects in the public sector are particularly challenging. State, provincial, and federal governments worldwide have sponsored noteworthy disasters in the past twenty years. As agile methods have evolved, become more mainstream, and demonstrated their value in the private sector in the past decade, they are often cited as a remedy for the public sector’s IT misery. Payson Hall examines the gap between current public sector IT project challenges and the often-suggested agile solution. Payson explores the challenges to effective vendor-delivered public sector agile projects and possible responses to those challenges. He answers the questions: Is agile ready for large public sector projects? Is the public sector ready for agile? Leave with a better understanding of the problems public sector entities and vendors face and ideas for overcoming some of those barriers.