VA Agile Development Project Could Have Been Better, Says GAO

The Veterans Affairs Department has tried agile development for the first time and pronounced it good despite what it might consider hissing from the Government Accountability Office, which says the department could have done it better.

Agile development is not a methodology per se, but a software development philosophy that emphasizes continuous and rapid incremental development and delivery of functionality along with close collaboration between programmers and users.

The VA decided in October 2008 to use an agile approach in the creation of a $207.1 million automated system for processing education benefits passed into law as a result of the Post-9/11 GI Bill.

And the VA has deployed the first two of four planned system releases but--says the GAO in a new report based on a briefing it gave to congressional staffers on Sept. 13--the VA has not ensured that certain critical tasks were completed on time and the VA will postpone some functionality for a fifth release or possibly a separate initiative.