SAFe for Government Videos

Government Presentations at the 2018 SAFe Global Summit

Disrupting and Transforming Digital at IRS

What happens when an agency with a legacy of paper forms and an auditing mindset sets out to build a modern platform for taxpayer interaction? This presentation describes how IRS transformed to using the Scaled Agile Framework to approach the challenges of aligning an enterprise to deliver working software at scale.

Government @ Speed – How to Build a Minimum Viable Product (EPA)

This presentation highlights how EPA is using SAFe practices to modernize an application critical to engine and vehicle manufacturers. The goal was to reduce complexity and improve the interface, while creating better compliance data for EPA. The effort was a success and was delivered within 6 months!

SAFe Principles and Practices at DHS

SAFe is built upon a strong set of principles and practices that form the foundation of a great agile scaling system for larger organizations. This presentation explored how some of these principles are being interpreted and practiced at the US Department of Homeland Security to meet the rapidly changing needs of an increasingly complex and dynamic world with great success.

Sprinting Around the Beltway – National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA)

Struggling with how to implement agile in government? Key members NNSA G2 program shares 5 tips for thriving in a SAFe environment while operating within a risk-averse government agency. Learn how they have complied with rigid policies and survived transitioning from a small project to a major IT investment over the past decade while sustaining momentum and maintaining a culture of excellence.

Scaling to SAFe at the National Science Foundation (NSF)

Witness a candid retrospective of NSF’s 3 year journey transforming the legacy waterfall process and culture into a unified release train utilizing the Scaled Agile Framework. Covers accomplishments, pitfalls, and lessons learned while expanding the NSF process from 1 agile team to an entire portfolio of applications using SAFe.

Enterprise Services Center: Transforming Government Shared Services

At the 2018 SAFe Summit in Washington, DC, Robyn Burk, Director of the Enterprise Services Center (ESC), and Joe LaTorre, ESC Enterprise Agile Coach, share the first three years of their SAFe implementation journey. In addition to an introduction of ESC as a mission support services provider for the Department of Transportation and other federal agencies, their discussion covers topics on how ESC is implementing SAFe, constraints and challenges, and the initial results of the organizational change amongst its 1,200 employees.

Lean-Agile and DevOps in Government

The Role of the Software Factory in Acquisition and Sustainment

SEI Director Dr. Paul Nielsen discusses his involvement with the 2018 Defense Science Board report that concluded that the software factory should be a key player in the acquisition and sustainment of software for defense. This video provides clarification on this recommendation as well as a general insights from the report.

Agile and DevOps at US Customs & Immigration Service (USCIS)

The US Citizenship and Immigration Services OIT processes need to regularly generate health measurements to prove due diligence to regulatory authorities. The Delivery Assurance Branch began to find unexpected signals of system health and surprising indicators of collaborative culture.

Can Government be Nimble and the State be Quick?

Complaining about the government is easy. Doing something about it? Much, much harder. But that’s exactly what Jennifer Pahlka, founder of Code for America and former Deputy CTO of the White House, has managed to do. In this video, Pahlka explains her life’s work transforming how the government uses technology to serve its citizens.

USAF’s Pawlikowski: DoD Use of Agile Software Development ‘Critical’

Gen. Ellen Pawlikowski, USAF,  commander of US Air Force Materiel Command, (now retired), discusses agile software development’s criticality to the work of both the US Air Force and US Defense Department — especially in the face of rising weapons-systems software costs — and barriers to its implementation.

How a start-up in the White House is changing business as usual

US Digital Service is transforming the way America delivers critical services to everyday people. The agency is using lessons learned by Silicon Valley and the private sector to improve services for veterans, immigrants, the disabled and others, creating a more awesome government along the way. “We don’t care about politics, we care about making government work better, because it’s the only one we’ve got.”

DevOps Transformation at the US Patent and Trademark Office

This presentation will describe the DevOps transformation effort at the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO, a SAFe customer). This general experience report proves a 3,000% increase in deployment frequency is possible within the federal government, while still adhering to audit/compliance laws and regulations. Simmons’s presentation will touch on organizational change management, compliance, emerging architecture, business unit buy-in and automated testing.

Kessel Run: A Digital Transformation Story within the World’s Largest Bureaucracy

There are few enterprises in the world that might find it tougher to become Agile and build software rapidly than a large Government organization such as the US Air Force. But that’s exactly the challenge Adam is solving through the Kessel Run project. Adam and the team are currently averaging about four months (124 days) to get a technology product from an idea on a whiteboard to operational – a task that normally would take 8 years.

Code. Deploy. Win.

Kessel Run revolutionizes the way the Air Force builds and delivers software capabilities by taking industry-proven software development practices and pairing them with talented Airmen. They disrupt decades of government bureaucracy with the mission to provide cutting edge capabilities at a rapid pace to the warfighter.

Kessel Run Agile Imperatives for DoD

Lt Col Jeremiah Sanders, Program Manager, Air Force Air Operations Center (AOC) and Deputy Director of Kessel Run, presents the foundational understanding of why all DoD programs need to consider moving to an Agile model to provide easier, better, faster and cheaper capabilities to our warfighters.  The Kessel Run moniker represents disruption to the traditional way DoD does business.  Similar to Star Wars where Kessel Run was one of the most heavily used smuggling routes in the Galactic Empire.  PM AOC is smuggling in Agile-DevSecOps into DoD.

Agile and Acquisitions in Government

Agile Acquisition 101 – Dr. Matt Kennedy

This video provides a basic primer to the different approach needed for government contracts that involve Agile services. This is an excellent five minute orientation for anyone seeking a quick understanding of how Agile influences the acquisition process.

Contracting for Change

In this video, Dr. Matt Kennedy continues to build on his “Agile Acquisition 101” video with this introduction to his “Contracting for Change” series. It provides an overview to the topic and identifies the follow-on videos that will provide a deeper dive into various Agile contracting strategies.

Complexity Level Contracting Approach

Dr. Matt Kennedy describes one Agile contracting approach that uses complexity buckets to provide pre-negotiated work packages that can be used when developing software based systems.

Capacity Team-Based Contracting Approach

Dr. Matt Kennedy presents the Capacity Team-Based Contracting (CTBC) Approach. CTBC allows agencies to contract for development capacity in the form of complete cross-functional Agile teams of the size, skillset, and quantity needed to meet program requirements.

4 RFP Elements to Include for Contracting for Agile Development

Four practical tips for contracting officers to help prepare RFPs involving Agile services, as well as some common anti-patterns to avoid.

Agile Contracting in the Federal Government by Joshua Seckel

Many federal agencies are contracting for agile teams, but how has contracting changed to become more agile in execution. The look at the move to using agile principles and processes within this highly regulated and constrained area has resulted in significant improvements in the contracting world as well as changes in the way that procurement happens within the federal government. This talk features changes within the contracting and procurement process at USCIS and DHS.