In a move that has taken far too long to come to fruition but has finally arrived, the United States Department of Defense (DoD) has made considerable changes to its procurement rules that in the past proved to be a major roadblock.
Before vendors were bound by law to develop software in a manner that conforms with the principles of waterfall, however many in the industry saw this as being ineffective and that is where quasi-agile processes like Scrumfall, Agilefall, and WaterScrumFall were born. Teams would try to integrate agile methodologies, though they could only be used within stages and not overall.
The new rules in the National Defense Authorization Act of 2010 marked a significant change in how software will be developed around the world, not only in the United States. Please find an excerpt from the act below:
(B) multiple, rapidly executed increments or releases of capability;
(C) early, successive prototyping to support an evolutionary approach; and
(D) a modular, open-systems approach.
“With the new rules there is now freedom to deliver more frequently and iteratively through the western world and this effect can be seen in recent UK projects as well as in the US,” an article from Scrum.org stated.
We are looking forward to what the future holds and how the world will become more agile by the day.
