Hire tech talent in-house

If nobody in the budget office or budget committee has experience with software development, then they are not well-equipped to consider a software development funding request. The same is true of agencies —if nobody in project leadership has experience with software development, then the agency is not well-equipped to lead a software development project successfully. The burden is on the governor’s office, legislators, and agency heads to ensure that their respective organizations prioritize hiring people who have this experience.

While it may be tempting to solve this knowledge gap by relying on somebody from the state’s central IT department, or by relying on a vendor, ultimately mission agencies must have the knowledge in-house to comprehend what they need, what they should be asking of vendors, and assessing the work done by vendors.

To determine if your budget office or your leadership has the experience to consider software requests or lead software projects, start by asking around. All but the smallest agencies will have technical staff who can join project leadership, although vanishingly few budget offices currently employ software developers.

If you don’t currently have the knowledge you need in-house, you’ll need to hire someone who does — even if only seasonally or on contract. A developer or designer with experience building modern software, ideally for government, is your best bet. Also, consider authorizing one or more employees to spend some of their training time learning the basics of agile software development — there are coding "bootcamps" throughout the U.S., including some online-only options.

The personnel cost of bringing in a developer or upskilling your current employees is minuscule in comparison to spending on technology. And once an employee has monitored an agile project from start to finish, they’ll be better equipped to consider future budget requests for custom software.

Likewise, mission agencies must directly employ enough developers that they can oversee the work being done by vendors. They’ll represent the contracting officer, ensuring that vendors’ work is of a high quality and that vendors are working on the right things.

Although software is never "done" — you’ll always need to adapt to changing technology, policy, regulations, laws, and user needs — there will be a point when you need far fewer developers to continue that work. At that point it becomes especially important to have multiple agency employees who fully grasp the software, who are capable of maintaining it.

For larger projects, you’ll need to contract for a development team indefinitely, under the oversight of a government product owner. Under waterfall, this travels under the name of "Operations and Maintenance," but under agile, O&M is simply continued user research, design, software development, etc.9

Checklist

  • There are one or more budget-office employees with experience developing complex, custom software in an agile environment who will assist in evaluating custom-software budget requests
  • If there are no budget-office employees with relevant experience, the legislature has a contract with a non-conflicted vendor — one with no other contracts with the state and no ties or partnerships with any COTS products
  • The agency has identified a specific government employee who will be providing technical leadership for the project, along with evidence of their experience developing custom software in an agile environment

Key questions

  • When a vendor delivers code at the end of every sprint, which specific government employee will inspect that code to ensure quality?
  • If an agency says they need $10 million to complete a specific software project, which budget office employee is equipped to know whether that’s an appropriate price? Which specific legislative budget committee employee is equipped to know whether that’s an appropriate price?
  • When the procurement is complete, who will maintain the software? Does the agency employ people who know how to maintain it? Will they be brought into the development process so that they can learn about it as it’s built and help ensure it’s something they’re capable of supporting?

Footnotes

9. For more about the difference between O&M and continuous agile development, read "Software maintenance is an anti-pattern" on the 18F blog. ↩︎