Abstract: USA Staffing is the U.S. Office of Personnel Management's hiring software solution for Federal agencies. USA Staffing positions agencies to acquire, assess, certify, select, and onboard qualified candidates precisely, efficiently and cost-effectively. It provides the up-to-date tools agencies need for strengthening the foundation of great government - your workforce. Created by OPM and based on the experience of more than 50 Federal agencies, USA Staffing is an off-the-shelf software solution for automating staffing and assessment. It combines core and advanced features in a user-friendly, web-enabled software solution. USA Staffing is compliant with Federal hiring regulations and meets Federal Information Technology (IT) security requirements. -
http://www.opm.gov/services-for-agencies/technology-systems/usa-staffing/ As the program that addresses the hiring of nearly all Federal employees, the USA Staffing program in a major program in the US Federal government. Starting with one Scrum team in August of 2012 to using Agile across all the program teams, the USA Staffing program is committed to Agile concepts and methods as it rebuilds and updates the USA Staffing IT systems.
In looking at key lessons learned during this transformation, the biggest steps in enabling results was to maximize two of the Agile values in a government context:
1. Individuals and interactions over processes and tools and
2. Customer collaboration over contract negotiation.
In Federal programs, these principles are often overlooked, but with the USA Staffing program, there was a concentrated focus to enable these principles. This created great collaborative working relationships with the USA Staffing stakeholders and customers and enabled a collaborative and self organizing culture across the distributed teams on the USA Staffing program.
Through lecture, group discussions and Q&A, this session will offer practical techniques for cultivating an Agile work environment in government when teams are organizationally and geographically separated. We will also detail how we worked with customer and stakeholder organizations to help them adapt to a rapid development cycle.
This session is presented by Bridget Dongarra, a Federal employee and Product Owner on the USA Staffing program and by Richard Cheng, an Agile coach and Trainer. Bridget will bring the Federal perspective into the session while Richard will help address Agile specific nuances in the Agile @ OPM implementation.
Learning Outcomes: - Techniques for cultivating collaborative work environments and supporting self-organizing teams
- Opportunities and challenges transitioning teams from waterfall to Agile methods
- Techniques for cultivating stakeholders and customer buy in for an Agile transformation
