How to be agile in a non-agile environment

Good article from the Gov.uk Government Digital Service blog.

It’s damn hard if not impossible to be agile in a rigid environment, where upper management just won’t grasp the benefits from having such an approach. Project pre proposal, proposal, design docs,… I’m not even sure how many papers it takes till a proposal gets to my table to realize it with my team. And when does the customer get it? Well, don’t let us dive deeper.

People claim they want to save money and yes, they should, especially in a public government sector where the money is given to you by your citizens. But this is not the way to save money. Time goes by where people work out papers over papers, and they have to be paid for that, obviously. Well, in a fraction of that time, a good developer could elaborate a coarse living prototype, just by being allowed to speak to the customer. Using such prototype it would be much easier to estimate costs and whether it’s feasible to implement the real product.