Ep. 175 Technical debt, code abstraction, and federal application development

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Every software developer knows about the meeting in February 2011 at a skiing lodge in Utah. Seventeen people met to produce the “Agile Software Manifesto.”

Large software projects were falling left and right. This was a group of experienced developers who thought interaction and flexibility were keys to producing complex code effectively.

They introduce concepts like iteration and technical debt to the general audience.

Twenty- three years later we see a distortion of these concepts in the federal government’s approach to software development. They may launch an application quickly and suboptimal, and then expect to iterate.

However, this process has been distorted to a point where 70% of the federal IT budget is spent on this “iteration” under the guise of Operations and Maintenance.

Today, we sat down with Sonny Hashimi, the Head of Global Sector for Unquirky. He has experience in the commercial world as well as the federal government. His last federal title was Commissioner, Federal Acquisition Service for the GSA.

He has seen this flawed software development strategy from many angles. He suggests that proprietary software should be replaced by open-source methods that will allow for rapid change in code.

That way, patches, and changes in direction of application development can be accomplished in a timely manner. This change would free up millions of dollars to accomplish improvements in federal systems.

Listen to hear his diagnosis of the problem and the options he provides.