Using the “Agile” paradigm to support innovation in large organizations

Abstract

The United States Government has created the Open Government Innovations Gallery (US Government 2009a). President Obama has also launched the SAVE Award (for ideas to save taxpayer dollars and make government more effective and efficient) and has released A Strategy for American Innovation, committing to increasing the innovation capability of the government by: making it more transparent, participatory and collaborative—promoting open government—using innovation to improve government programs—committing White House resources to scaling and promoting community innovations. This Administration is not the only one worldwide encouraging departments and agencies to experiment with new technologies that have the potential to increase efficiency and reduce expenditures, such as cloud computing. The United Kingdom is another example of a government which has been very active over recent years in seeking to promote and embed innovation in its civil service. One of the most difficult area to renew is the procurement area. The case of software acquisition is a special one because the product development process itself has gradually become “agile” with adaptive requirement management and continuous delivery. In this framework, the existing administrative tools are very difficult to use and budget planning cannot be performed in the traditional way. One of the most relevant organizations trying to introduce innovation is NATO, that under the pressure of the above mentioned political trends has started a relevant innovation effort starting from the operational software acquisition. In this paper, the general trends of the innovative acquisition processes are discussed and a particular refinement is dedicated to the Agile Software Procurement Process.