The Agile-Enabled Evolution of ELIS

Below we’ve constructed a matrix that outlines different stages of various aspects of the ELIS development process and the Agile-enabled evolution that influenced each stage over the past 10 years.

 
This blog is a part of a bigger article, if you are interested please read it here. 

About Infostellar

Founded in 2007, Infostellar has grown to become a leading trusted advisor and thought leader in government DevOps and Agile Software development practices through years of development support for the Federal Government. Founded on the principles of interactive, innovative and incremental practices, Infostellar inc. believes that complex business challenges can be solved through true Agile development backed by highly skilled and motivated technical teams.

Flexible Agile Development Services (FADS) for ELIS

USCIS’ former CIO Mark Schwartz pioneered the use of FADS contract which is designed to provide access to fully integrated agile delivery and to encourage a stronger focus on quality and performance. FADS and other follow on contracts FADS II and ODOS support USCIS’ essential mission critical system Electronic Immigration System (ELIS) which is used to process immigration benefit applications.

As USCIS embraced the Agile journey, Infostellar joined their effort through the Transformation Project, a $3.1 billion high priority program with the goal of modernizing the naturalization and immigration benefit application’s processing operations. The project’s development approach is Agile using contractor developed and open source software.
According to a congressional audit in 2016, at first USCIS only partially implemented Agile, putting their largest projects at risk of exceeding costs and schedule goals. It was not until some contractors showed the way that USCIS succeeded. One of those was Infostellar which proved that Agile Management best practices and DevOps, when done right could reduce risk, time and costs. As you can see from the Federal Dashboard below, the program improved from high risk to low risk ( as of June 2020)

Source: https://itdashboard.gov/drupal/summary/024/024-000003015#

Grounded in an Agile software development process, Infostellar’s Three I’s approach is what helped the program
to successfully implement agile resulting in reducing program risk over time.

Technical Demonstrations/ Coding Challenges

In an article entitled “Show me, don’t tell me’ enters the government contracting mainstream” on the Business of Federal Technology site, author Steve Kelman explains the history of winning awards. According to Kelman the first strategy was based on past performance which he jokingly refers to as when “proposals being delivered to the government by forklift”. Increasingly, federal government is using coding challenges or technical demonstrations as a tool to see the contracting companies in action and evaluate their capabilities while they deliver an MVP over few hours to few days. Infostellar has a proven track record of leading and winning the technical demonstration and coding challenges resulting in awards.
Infostellar with its teaming partners has won several technical demonstrations and coding challenges which in itself is a testament of it’s agile process, technical capabilities, and ability to pull the right team for the right job. Below is a quick summary of the tech demos/challenges that Infostellar has been part of:

Infostellar has been successful in every coding challenge / technical demo.

8(a-gile)

Infostellar is a certified participant in the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) 8(      a) Business Development

program. This provides us with the ability to obtain sole-source set-aside contracts up to $4M as well as competitive set-aside contracts. Combination of our participation in 8(a) program and our ability to deliver in small increments in a series of minimally viable products (MVPs) using our Agile DevSecOps practices greatly reduces the risk on federal projects.

The two, 8(a) and agile in our opinion are synergistic. The combination of providing award winning agile performance (a-gile) while success with our participation in Small Business 8(a) program results in the acronym “8(a-gile)” which means “we provide world class Agile technology for a low investment risk”. It represents our philosophy of starting small and delivering value on continuous basis.

Summary

Infostellar differentiates itself by using Agile DevSecOps practices, be it Coding Challenges/Technical Demonstrations or mission critical contracts such as Flexible Agile Development Services (FADS) supporting USCIS’ ELIS program. Our philosophy is based on the three I’s which stands for: Incremental, Innovative an Interactive. Perhaps our most important differentiation is how we can minimize investment risk with our 8(a-gile) philosphy. The 8(a-gile) combines our participation in SBA’s 8(a) program and award-winning Agile development expertise to reduce risk on federal programs.

What’s working for ELIS

• True Agility – ELIS is the place where imagination and creativity of development teams isn’t held back by bureaucracy in any way. True Agility does bring the best out of technical teams.
• Openness and Collaboration across teams – A stance where anyone can review anybody else’s code. Quality or team stats are available across teams. Developers across vendors truly collaborate while working on each other’s code.
• Shared Responsibility – Regardless of which vendor codes it, it’s all going to production next day. Either teams can choose to blame each other or they can collaborate among themselves to get it delivered.
• Monthly Scorecard – Scorecard objectives keep the development teams focused on what’s most important.

What’s not working for ELIS

• Sharing the Rewards – Just like how there is a sense of shared responsibility, there could be a more shared and balanced approach to recognize the good work.
• Competition – Competition continues here even after the contract award. The mentality that “someone’s loss is someone else’s gain” should be kept in check. Finding creative ways to foster healthy competition will boost even more productivity across teams regardless of vendors.
• Barrier to Entry – March to microservices hasn’t been able to make a dent in the huge code base, and an ever-growing big monolithic database. New vendors find it daunting to come up-to-speed to perform. ODOS I vendor could never find a firm footing in coming up to the speed and flourish there.

This blog is a part of a bigger article, if you are interested please read it here.

About Infostellar

Founded in 2007, Infostellar has grown to become a leading trusted advisor and thought leader in government DevOps and Agile Software development practices through years of development support for the Federal Government. Founded on the principles of interactive, innovative and incremental practices, Infostellar inc. believes that complex business challenges can be solved through true Agile development backed by highly skilled and motivated technical teams.

For nearly ten years, the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has operated the immigration management system called Electronic Immigration System (ELIS) to manage and process immigrant benefit requests. ELIS started out as a public facing benefit intake system but was redesigned to exclusively serve as an internal electronic case management system for electronically filed benefit request forms and certain paper forms. Over the ten year period, USCIS’ ELIS system has inevitably gone through many iterations to help improve not only the user experience of the ELIS platform but also to drive down cost, improve efficiency and keep pace with modern technologies.

Infostellar Inc. has been a key participant in maturing the ELIS architecture and Agile development practices. As we look back over the past decade of improvements in ELIS, we apply the same technique used by Agile Retrospectives, which is an agile ceremony held at the end of an Agile iteration to uncover areas of improvement.

The Agile-Enabled Evolution of ELIS

Below we’ve constructed a matrix that outlines different stages of the ELIS workflow and the Agile-enabled evolution that influenced each stage over the past 10 years.

Each aspect in various stages of ELIS, whether it be Contract/Acquisition, Architecture, Process Maturity or DevOps Maturity measured by Deployments underwent significant changes to gain efficiencies and keep up-to-date with the progress of technology which was no small feat. Evolution and maturity of ELIS was driven by the need to satisfy the business and the culture to improve continuously.

A Retrospective of ELIS’s Evolution

Taking from the Agile retrospective framework, we can identify key characteristics that both helped and also limited the effectiveness of ELIS. Specifically, by looking back we can uncover what is working for ELIS, what is not working for ELIS today and what can be improved upon.

What’s working for ELIS

What’s not working for ELIS

What can be improved

• Multi-vendor presence on development teams is losing its charm due to the imbalance of share that each ODOS II vendor has. ODOS III could be a good opportunity to restore that balance.
• Investment in documentation – While all answers can be found in the code, but it’s sheer size is daunting for any one new who comes in. Documentation may seem anti agile but some minimal design documentation should be created to bring the newcomers up to the speed.

Moving Forward

ELIS is as agile as it gets. This is the place in our experience where federal contractor’s capabilities, right from recruiting to retention, and ability to bring in continuous improvement, be able to thrive with the competition, and of course technical abilities get tested. With full-spread incorporation of true Agile development practices and DevSecOps practices, we here at Infosterral Inc. are proud to be part of USCIS’s ELIS journey. Founded in 2007, Infostellar has grown to become a leading trusted advisor and thought leader in government DevOps and Agile Software development practices through years of development support for the Federal Government. Founded on the principles of interactive, innovative and incremental practices, Infostellar inc. believes that complex business challenges can be solved through true Agile development backed by highly skilled and motivated technical teams.

If you’d like to know more about our Agile approach we encourage you to reach out to our dedicated team @ Simply.agile@infostellarinc.com or call us at (703) 852-8999.

Download Infostellar PDF Learning From The Past_The Evolution of USCIS’s ELIS, a Retrospective