Advancing the Agile Software Process: The case of modernizing the Army Community Service's information technology infrastructure

摘要

There is a gap between the promises of big data, interoperability, and service-oriented systems and what most governmental agencies currently receive in return from their information systems. Such disparity is apparent in the domain of health and human services, as government organizations are grappling with the challenge of streamlining their business processes and delivery of care to adhere to a person-centered approach that relies on interoperable systems and meaningful data exchange. Since 2014, the Georgia Tech Research Institute has supported the U.S. Department of the Army in this endeavor by modernizing a suite of information systems used to provide family-centric social services, in support of family readiness and inclusive of child wellbeing, healthy marriages and parenting, and the treatment and prevention of domestic violence and child abuse. In this paper, we discuss how agile software development methodology on its own is not conducive to modernization efforts where legacy systems, data, and human processes cannot be replaced entirely. Instead, the authors propose an adapted model that combines agile development with enhanced user-centered design techniques as a socio-technical approach to software modernization. We will describe our process, reflect on lessons learned, and discuss select future implications associated with this type of work.