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2017 Predictions: Jay Song, CTO, California Highway Patrol

What will happen next year? We asked the experts.

Agile development versus waterfall: Is the state of California heading in the right direction? My answer is yes.

Agile development has been adopted widely in the both private and public sectors. It provides flexibility to adapt changes, modularize projects to reduce complexity, and decrease a product’s time to market by incremental deployment of large projects in smaller phases.

The potential is there for more successful project deliveries and earlier notification of projects that are possibly troubled. The adoption of either waterfall or agile development should depend on the nature of each project. When a waterfall is selected, it doesn’t prevent an organization from using agile development in each waterfall stage. The core competency required for agile development is the ability to deconstruct a project’s complexity into smaller, digestible components and incrementally complete each one by iteration of system or software development life cycles.

The fundamentals of successful project management aren’t about the adoption of a project methodology, but rather the rudimentary foundation
of clearly identified accountability and responsibility among the project owners, and the right skill sets and resource commitment from project team members. If those key components are lacking, you could have a certified project manager implementing an agile development methodology — but the project could still fail.

Jay Song is the CTO of the California Highway Patrol.