Government needs a SkunkWorks

Picture this: you have a string of big projects, and all of them are expensive. All of them are late, and everyone is getting pretty fed up. You keep hearing stories of small, nimble organisations who, startup-like, produce miracles on a shoestring. And you look at them jealously, but no matter what you try, you just can't seem to get that kind of performance for yourself.

This is the problem with almost all development shops where there is Big-IT. Big-IT is characterised by big processes, big budgets, and very, very big projects. It is also characterised by big overruns, and significant budget-blow outs.

It is a problem which is magnified in Government. I say that knowing that doing so will likely get me into quite a bit of trouble. I do it anyway, because now is the first time in ages that there's a chance to change things.

Just why is it that Big-IT always fails to perform well when it comes to delivering big pieces of functionality?

Here's my view. If you want to build a small house, you can put down a concrete slab for a foundation and get started. If you want to build a skyscraper, you dig deep holes, put in very comprehensive foundations, and install significant infrastructures up and down the building to make sure nothing falls down. If you want to build an elevator to orbit, practically the whole building will be supporting infrastructure, and there'd going to be precious little space for anything useful for people.

In Big-IT, we almost always build elevators to orbit, especially in outsourced environments. Outsourcers love these things because all the governance, security, test, and process groupies allow them to sell way more hours than they'd be able to otherwise. They're hardly going to turn up for small projects, now, are they?

In Government, practically all IT projects are big. My argument, though, is that now is a good time to try something very different. Lets build lots of little projects without all the supporting infrastructures and administration first, and then worry about the infrastructure we must have after. Let us let projects get big only after we've proved that whatever-it-is works.

This is a tried approach,  known as a Skunkworks. Government needs a Skunkworks, and it needs one badly.

We need one badly because the entrenched ways of doing things - which have worked reasonably well for decades - have stopped working now. It is no longer possible to ignore the fact that groups of citizens, some with practically no training, can build stuff in days that takes Government years and costs millions. Fact is, those millions simply aren't available any more.

A Skunkworks would let us try new things, and more particularly, let us try new ways to do new things. It would also let us fail cheaply and quickly.

This last will be the hardest thing for civil servants to accept, of course, because failure is a very, very dirty word. But quick and cheap failure is really spectacular success. Failures of this kind teach lessons,  letting you move on to the right way of doing things more quickly.

My guess is  a Skunkworks which celebrated rapid and cheap failure would have significant economic upside, actually. If even 10% of the things it tried worked and produced value, I rather think that those few things would pay many times over for all the failures that went before.

Not to mention that those things would happen quickly.

What's stopping us spooling up a Skunkworks? Nothing but the momentum which continues to carry us down the old path. It's inertia, but, as I said, we're at the dawn of something new. Personally, I'm confident that all manner of  things which would have been difficult before will now become possible.

Technorati Tags: Government, skunkworks, failure

Comments

[Mark Toomey]

Actually, small nimble organizations that do things on a shoestring have one huge advantage over the rest - executive engagement. Look at every surprisingly effective (in IT terms) small organization and you will find top execs - typically the owner, with a crystal clear vision and an iron fist to keep everything on track. Big organizations lose that executive engagement - sometimes to the point where competing execs undermine the initiative, and successors abandon what was their predecessor's passion. The key advantage in a skunkworks is that it generally forms around somebody who has that entrepreneurial flair with vision and determination. But since such character is the critical factor for a successful skunkworks, and is itself in very short supply, attempts to transform mega-IT into a bundle of independent skunkworks is more likely to result in an array of errant, undisciplined, unfocused, very smelly skunks.

Far better in all contexts to heed the advice in ISO 38500’s Responsibility Principle and start by declaring that business executives are responsible and accountable for the only meaningful measure of success for IT projects – achievement of the intended business outcomes. This should be followed immediately by attention to the Human Behaviour principle in ISO 38500, ensuring that these executives have very strong incentives to behave like entrepreneurs – demonstrating clear vision and absolute commitment to success, EVEN when they disagree with the strategy or have a different personal preference.

To learn more about ISO 38500, go to www.infonomics.com.au.

[Neil Robinson]

Great, Mark. Corrupt the purity of a great idea with bureaucracy from the word go with ISO-MyArse 2010. Oh, please!

You can't remove overhead by adding overhead. Don't you understand what a Skunkworks is?

Google it, Mark, see what Lockheed Martin did and realise how wrong you are to even suggest squaring off the wheels of this.

James - good luck to you. This is a brave suggestion. But its a great route to yesterday's answer. Surely you don't need to invent any more IT. IT is now a utility.

We call it The Cloud.

[stephen]

The Skunkworks will still need a process.

Personally, I see it as just a cog in a bigger wheel.

It will have a demand and supply side to it.

I guess I would be asking how will it integrate with any existing front-end process?

In terms of the bigger wheel – still lots to do there.

[Mark]

Good stuff, some of us are already trying this on a small scale but we need to break down the silos and work both across our world and reach out to others to create a new way of delivering systems and success.

Unlike other commentators, I do not see process as an issue - we are Civil Servants so have more process than a forest has leaves. And as for the cloud and utility computing, so what. IT is not the technology, it is the ability to use technology to transform our businesses, our services and our opportunities.

[Adrian Short]

This idea is contained in the Conservative technology manifesto:

"We will also create a small IT development team in government — a 'government skunkworks' — that can develop low cost IT applications in-house and advise on the procurement of large projects."

Let's see if they implement it.

http://projects.adrianshort.co.uk/conservative-technology-manifesto-2010/#sec1-4-5

Rather than having defined teams within government working as skunkworks, a better approach would probably be to something like Google's 20% time for self-directed projects. Then *everyone* is a skunkworks and can work individually or with whoever they like, following their passions wherever they take them.

Things get much more interesting once you mix in open data and third-party developers. Then you get numerous small projects and the occasional big one without having to bear any of the direct costs or risks yourself.

[Neil Robinson]

Two great quotes, Mark. "The Cloud - so what?"

And a classic - "IT is not the technology"

So what does the "T" in "IT" stand for, Mark?

"Technology" actually means the technique or way we choose to do things. Not computers, not networks, not data centres. It's not one thing, always done a certain way. Maybe we shouldn't forget that.

So "Information Technology" just means "the techniques we employ to manage information.

End of semantics lesson.

[David Steed]

I think one of the problems you are describing which I think the Public Sector is very guilty of is flogging dead horses. A lot of IT initiative in both public and private sector part way through don't look like the good idea they did at the start. I think commercial companies recognise doomed projects quicker and kill them. I think the public sector for many reasons is not as ruthless and carries on pouring in money afraid to stop. There are many examples where the money spent defies "common sense" ie. projects set up to reduce cost that end up costing orders of magnitude more than the cost they were trying to avoid. SkunkWorks may be a mindset that helps prevent this from happening, as these projects should be easy to kill if they are not delivering.

[Mark Toomey]

Thanks for that very constructive response Neil Robinson. I can see from your own blog that you have vast experience in the industry dating back many years. Now which ISO standards do your much loved ATM's rely on? Now have you ever actually read ISO 38500? Do you realise that it tells organizations to do EXACTLY what Lockheed Martin did - ands by the way EXACTLY what James was saying? As for your assertion that IT is no longer the issue - you, like Nicholas Carr before you, are absolutely right, and comprehensively wrong at the same time. The issue is not the physical elements of the information technology, but the use that we make of the information technology - the way that we design the system of business, defined in 1963 by H Leavitt at MIT. The trouble of course is that we use the same term to refer to the components and their application. By the way - if Carr had been right in likening IT to electricity, then the development of electronic equipment would have stopped immediately the major power grids were developed - then we would have been frozen in time, with Edison globes, crackly long wave radio, and telephones operated by plug boards. There would have been no computers, no clouds, and certainly no forums where people can make arrogant statements without having to be accountable for them.

Mark, Adrian - keep up the good work - it is through people like you that our business leaders will eventually understand the principal messages in ISO 38500 - that they are responsible for the successful delivery of business outcomes that come from investment in applied use (just so others understand the point) of IT, and that if they want to be successful they have to drive use of highly effective techniques, just as Lockheed Martin did.

And for the benefit of those unaware: The Lockheed Martin skunkworks was established to build a jet fighter late in WW II. It satisfied the principles of ISO 38500 magnificently: Responsibility - one passionate and capable individual, totally focused on the outcome, led the project. Strategy - the project could not have been better aligned with the USAF intentions. Acquisition: The case for building the aircraft, the engagement of Lockheed Martin and the method - using a skunkworks, were impeccable. Performance: Clearly the skunkworks is deeply focused on achieving performance goals for its projects. Conformance: here the skunkworks has considerable freedom – not totally dishonouring the rules, but being pragmatic about how they are applied. Human behaviour: Ensuring that the skunkworks is regarded as elite is but one way of recognising human behaviour and motivating high achievement.

Now if the public sector - or the other sectors for that matter - could take the time to think about what ISO 38500 means, and set up their own skunkworks, we might all be better off.

[Neil Robinson]

ATM's were invented by an NCR employee - an engineering hobbyist- up in Dundee in his spare time. I'm pretty sure he didn't invent a legislative framework first. ATM development stagnated when they became regulated. Sort of ISO-tised.

NCR didn't pay the guy a penny for the idea.

When I worked on them I hated their shortcomings but had no power to change anything. It wasn't until I left NCR that I was able to change anything - like inventing vandal screens that didn't break and cost a tenth of what NCR charged.

NCR threatened an injunction to stop me. So I hold no passion for NCR's ATM's, I'm afraid.

I see Wikipedia defines ISO 38500 as:

"The ISO/IEC 38500 Corporate governance of information technology standard, provides a framework for effective governance of IT to assist those at the highest level of organizations to understand and fulfill their legal, regulatory, and ethical obligations in respect of their organizations’ use of IT."

Hmm. I wonder. If I was tunneling out of a prisoner of war camp (surely the essence of innovation), would ISO 38500 help or hinder me?

Legal, regulatory, ethical? Buzz words heard in innovation circles?

Oh, I think not...

[Stephen]

I think some of James ideas in the http://www.littleinnovationbook.com/ could be a good foundation for a SkunkWorks.

Mark, thanks for bringing ISO38500 to my attention. Current levels of IT governance are very much first generation, and from my experience highly inefficient and often ineffective so something new in that space is a good thing.

The SkunkWorks portfolio management process will require a form of (lightweight) governance, and so will the outputs of the SkunkWorks as the ideas are taken forward for further implementation by the bigger machine.

I do like this Web 2.0 world, conversations appear to often self regulate, perhaps better than in face to face meetings?

[Mark]

Well James, as head of Future design in the DWP, are you not in the key position to create one in the DWP.
As you are aware as part of the Change Programme rapid solutions group (Information capture tool, etc) I've been trying for the last 3 years to get the idea accepted, by the 'big IT' establishment.

[James Gardner]

Mark,

I guess so, and we are trying. But there are some challenges which I am sure you will apprecoate, including getting everyone to agree that doing things in a new way is sensible and possible.

Email me privately if you'd like a personal update.