Rolling out a mission critical system in an agilish way: reflections on building a large-scale dependable information system for public sector

Abstract

Despite the increasing pace of development and deployment of new software systems, the expectations regarding critical information systems have not changed. Consequently, to ensure high quality in spite of rapid updates, the fashion these facilities are taken to use need careful considerations. This paper presents and analyses real-life experiences gathered during the many years of planning, design, implementation, testing and finally deploying as a service a large, multi-million euro, extremely mission critical information system for emergency services. The project was to be carried out in an agile way, although the scope, the price and the duration were fixed by signed contracts. Fortunately, the customer was willing and able to learn how to do system development iteratively and incrementally, as well as to provide personnel to constantly collaborate with the developers. Along the way, we learned that to truly succeed in such an endeavor as this one, it is not enough to do the things almost right or by the book. Instead, everyone involved must keep raising the bar every day, in a continuous, disciplined, and controlled way.