Large + successful + government + IT + Agile = Census

Leon Maritz

June 2014

I’m going to cover

• Census• Scrum Basics• Census in 3 Stages• Summary of Agile Successes• Census Successes• Census Adoption

Census Overview

• Recruitment• Training• Distribution• Online• Collection• Analysis• Output

Census is large

6.4 million census forms to

1.8 million homes

Census is large

About $72 million

Census is large

7,000 trained collectors

Census is large

Large IT system

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Scrum Basics

IT Development in 3 StagesEarthquakes

Stage 1 Apr 2009 to Sep 4, 2010 (Census 2011)

Stage 2 Sep 4, 2010 to Feb 22, 2011

Stage 3 After Feb 22, 2011 (Census 2013)

Stage 1 Apr 2009 to 4 Sep 2010

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Daily Stand-ups

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Retrospective

• What went well• What didn’t go that well• Improvements• Acknowledgements

What went well

• Training - Scrum master and Product Owner• Agile Champion• Backlog Review• Quick feedback – thin slices • Inspect and adapt

What didn’t go so well

• Estimation – software upgrade, Technical debt • Over projection on Sprint Backlog• Separate seating per role• Release to UAT as definition of Done

What the business thought

• I like the approachability• I like the more open communication• I like the transparency

Stage 2 Sep 4, 2010 to Feb 22, 2011

• Need Feb building pictures

What went well

• Co-location• Definition of Done changing to In Production• We learnt to estimate better

What didn’t go so well

• Multiple Product Owners• Stories bigger than 13• Disruption due to Earthquake

What the business thought

• I like being at the stand-ups• I like the fact that the messenger does not

influence the priority of a story

Stage 3 After Feb 22, 2011

Need picture of Level 3

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Kanban – Visual Card

• Visualize the workflow• Limit work in Progress• Manage flow• Make process policies explicit• Improve collaboratively

What went well

• Evolution is ok• Kanban• Team Trust• Working from home• Government Cloud

What didn’t go so well

• User stories over 13

What the business thought

• I like fast track• I like being able to propose a user story at any

time

Summary of Agile Successes• Transparency• Collaboration• Co-location• Continuous improvement• Multiple Product Owners• Self organized teams

Remaining Opportunities

• Deployments• Automate

Census Success

• Successful census - 5 march 2013• Streamlined recruitment• Better training

• Government cloud• Quickstats

Census Agile Adoption

• Census adopted Scrum for future census• Doing daily stand-ups• Census do Retrospectives• Census involved in Agile community of practice

Large + successful + government + IT + Agile = Census

We are happy to help

What do we mean by benchmarking?

• Investigate the two sets of Agile implementations• How we differ and why?• What should we take from the process?• How can we share our experience?

Why the Government

• Similar challenges• Same mandate - collaborate• We work for the same client

Why is Agile a good place to start?

• Continuous improvement is built into Agile• Suggests looking outward for improvements• Promotes openness and courage• Provides common ground to establish

connections

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Long Term Vision

Q & A