United Health Care

The Agile Manifesto seems like ancient history now.  The concepts of iterative development were not new - but they hadn't been marketed until the manifesto was published and the movement was unleashed. In  late 1999 or early 2000 I can remember sitting in a meeting room with the Assistant CIO of a large healthcare organization .. describing my preference for using what I then called an iterative development process - where we would define "bite-sized parts" for implementation, exposure, and refinement on a regular basis.  She had never heard of such a thing - and advocated for the developers on the team:  "They need to know when it's finished!"  Me:  "This is software - it's never finished" "But the customer needs to sign off on a completed project.  How can we know that it will meet the customer need?" "uuuh ... ask them?" "We ask them during the requirements process - when they define the project" "And that is successful?  They are always happy with the final product?" "Well - no - but if they didn't describe their needs appropriately - that isn't our concern.  So long as they have signed off on the spec before the development work begins - we have clarity for the what the requrements are - and if we build it to spec - we've completed the project and we can move on." .. I stopped trying.  Clearly the goal here was to complete the project "to spec" and move on to the next project.  There was a problem though - developers were bypassing standard process - and interacting directly with customers (with no management oversight) and were creating solutions collaboratively with customers. So the Ass(istant) CIO wanted to give the developers a sense of closure .. but the developers wanted to please the customers - and bypassed their managers to do so! Trouble in them thar hills, too.  With no Human Factors training - and minimal design skill - developers all-too-often gave the customers what they asked for rather than what they needed.  End result: ACIO came down hard on such "renegade" developers. This reinforced the waterfall mentality.  :-(

The Agile Manifesto seems like ancient history now.  The concepts of iterative development were not new - but they hadn't been marketed until the manifesto was published and the movement was unleashed.

In  late 1999 or early 2000 I can remember sitting in a meeting room with the Assistant CIO of a large healthcare organization .. describing my preference for using what I then called an iterative development process - where we would define "bite-sized parts" for implementation, exposure, and refinement on a regular basis. 

She had never heard of such a thing - and advocated for the developers on the team: 

"They need to know when it's finished!" 

Me:  "This is software - it's never finished"

"But the customer needs to sign off on a completed project.  How can we know that it will meet the customer need?"

"uuuh ... ask them?"

"We ask them during the requirements process - when they define the project"

"And that is successful?  They are always happy with the final product?"

"Well - no - but if they didn't describe their needs appropriately - that isn't our concern.  So long as they have signed off on the spec before the development work begins - we have clarity for the what the requrements are - and if we build it to spec - we've completed the project and we can move on."

I stopped trying.  Clearly the goal here was to complete the project "to spec" and move on to the next project. 

There was a problem though - developers were bypassing standard process - and interacting directly with customers (with no management oversight) and were creating solutions collaboratively with customers.

So the Ass(istant) CIO wanted to give the developers a sense of closure .. but the developers wanted to please the customers - and bypassed their managers to do so!

Trouble in them thar hills, too.  With no Human Factors training - and minimal design skill - developers all-too-often gave the customers what they asked for rather than what they needed.  End result: ACIO came down hard on such "renegade" developers.

This reinforced the waterfall mentality.  :-(

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