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Tag: Agile

  • ERP X shows how an agile Government should operate

    ERP X shows how an agile Government should operate

    I dropped by the OGP office to meet fellow ERP X beta testers. had hoped this would be the path we took instead of the current ERP 2.0.

    My sense is that ERP 2.0 is already too deeply entrenched to change course. But that is also why ERP X is a real lesson in how government should operate in a Singapore that is supposed to be agile, fast-paced, and tech-savvy.

    For people in tech, this all sounds very familiar: start small, test in the real world, learn quickly, and adjust based on what you actually find. Don’t spend years locking into a system, only to discover too late what people love or hate about it.

    And it is not just about the tax money spent. It is also about the time, energy, and public sector capacity that a poorly thought out half-billion dollar project consumes.

    One thing I’d like to see more of is the Government running public beta programmes like this, especially for digital services and technology. There’s simply no substitute for real-world feedback from the people who will actually use the product.

    I’m also encouraged to see that there are teams within Government building products with genuine pride, conviction, and a strong sense of responsibility towards taxpayer’s money.

    I also shared that the traditional Government approach of awarding large, monolithic software tenders is becoming increasingly unsuited to today’s pace of technology.

    Agile, experimental, user-centred ways of working should be the default, especially for projects that affect the whole country. This includes also how Government contracts vendors. If ERP X leaves behind anything, I hope it is this lesson.

  • The Second Lecture

    So the second lecture was on Software Engineering. Big word and unfortunately means big problem. The class was introduced to Agile/Scrum which is a newer methodology compared to the old waterfall/spiral SDLC model that I was taught in school.

    I used Agile/Scrum about two years ago in my previous job and my experiences were much similar to the ex-students who presented. I worked with teams from about 2 to 6 in size. Honestly, not many teams can get past 10 pax because of $$$. I must say 80 is an awesome huge group!

    So here’s my observations:

    • The common effort multiplier is between 2.5 to 3 not because people are slow or bad at estimating, but because they did not consider time taken for communication and other context switching overheads. However as the team gets better and better at estimating their effort this multiplier can go down to about 2. Don’t forget, Project Manager doesn’t do the actual work but still gets paid. 🙂 So where does his effort go?
    • The biggest problem with estimating effort is with companies billing by the hour. I was constantly questioned for high estimates (thanks to my 3x multiplier) because it ballooned the cost of a project and I was pressurized to push it down, but guess what? It always overruns, i.e. the original high estimate was correct.
    • Agile works well with small projects too, just that you may not need to religiously hold the daily scrums, but the idea of having broken parts down into bite-sizes is the key to easing project management.

    Wei Man is right. Geeks are bad at estimating effort, but we have to know what it takes to do something so that we can manage ourselves. Time, energy and life are finite and therefore our efforts are finite as well. If you don’t learn the skill of estimating efforts I can 100% assure you that you’ll overrun your projects. This is from a personal experience from not getting paid and even almost being sued. 🙁

    ***

    On the documentation part, Prof. Ben is right. There’s a job market out there with people writing documentation. This type of job is called Technical Writing. If you’re good with language, maybe this is a job you can pursue. There’s not many of these companies around and their clients are usually huge (Aerospace, Military, etc.) so you get paid pretty decent. Not to late to change courses now.