3.2 Agile Organization, Roles, and Responsibilities - Stakeholder Level
One addition to the typical traditional Air Force PMO organization is an Agile Coach. As described in the previous training and coaching section, the Agile Coach is someone who can provide real-time answers for the immediate Agile issue. Another addition to the typical PMO staff is an end-user representative, the PO, who is empowered to work with the contractors' agile development team and make decisions that are binding for the development. Given the nature of government contracting, care must be taken to ensure that the PO user representative has the legal authority to direct the contractor. We can envision a situation where constructive change could become an issue. Another addition to the PMO is a DevSecOps Lead who works with the with contractor engineering support teams that may be divided into two segments: Continuous Integration Team and Continuous Delivery/Deployment Team to implement configuration management, version control, automated build, automated security testing, automated functional testing and regression testing.
The government needs skilled Agile personnel to review the documentation and understand how the Agile software development approach works. Many traditional PMO teams do not have software representatives experienced with modern software development approaches. That could be more problematic in an Agile environment, where any shortfalls quickly become more visible.
Another challenge is keeping high-performing Agile teams together long enough for them to achieve peak performance. This is a challenge because developers can change at the end of a contractual period of performance. The continuity of an Agile team enhances the tacit knowledge of the program and this improves overall performance. One recommendation might be to look at is putting key Agile technical leads into the PMO under a separate contract vehicle or hire them to work for the government PMO organization itself.