Agile Counts in Census Project

Janis is an award-winning journalist and editor who has covered many industries beyond project management, including health care, financial services, higher education and retail sales.

  Agile   Communications Management   ProjectsAtWork  

Stepping into a predecessor’s mess and facing a ruthless timeline, an IT contractor delivered a critical operations system for the 2010 Census by relying on agile expertise, an essential application lifecycle management tool and above-and-beyond dedication of the development team. But first politics and skepticism about agile practices had to be overcome.

Conducting the U.S. Census is an undeniably high-profile project, so when the software to support the 2010 decennial effort wasn’t being developed fast enough or properly by the original contracted organization, the government turned to a contingency IT contractor, ICS Nett in Vienna, Va.

Being tapped in August 2008 to develop the Census Bureau’s paper-based operations control system in less than two years was extremely challenging, according to Khurram Shah, ICS founding partner and chief strategy officer, and Erika Peace, project manager. “The program ran a very tough timeline, really an impossible timeline,” Shah says. “We were given one-third of the usual time to build the decennial from soup to nuts with a team size of 110 folks.”

Using huge stores of personal determination and aided by a strong application lifecycle management tool, the team succeeded in delivering the system in 18 months and under budget. The system is essential in Census operations because it controls the …

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