Lifecycle management in government-driven open source projects – practical framework

Abstract

In many parts of the world, public sector organizations are increasingly interested in collaborating across organizational (and even national) boundaries to develop software solutions under an open licence. However, without sound lifecycle management practices, the full benefits of open collaboration are not achieved and projects fail to achieve sustained success. This paper introduces a lifecycle management model and framework for government-driven open-source projects and reports about its use in a real-life case study. Our focus is on lifecycle management activities which take place between deployment and end-of-life. The framework was developed iteratively through a series of focus group discussions with representatives of public sector organizations. After the framework had been taken into use in our real-life case project, individual qualitative interviews were conducted to collect experiences on its benefits and weaknesses. According to the initial evidence, the deployment of the framework seems to have brought concrete benefits to the project, e.g. by contributing positively to community growth, software quality and inter-organizational learning.

Challenges and Best Practices Solution of Agile Project Management in Public Sector: A Systematic Literature Review

“…Project Work There are technical problems in Agile implementation [18], [31] Project contract issues that need flexibility [19], [30], [33] A priori implementation (knowledge that exists before meeting experience) in the public sector [20] Difficulty in integration into legacy systems [21] Troubled in project management and project processes [24] Communication challenges in Agile processes [25], [26], [28] Long implementation of change management and long execution [28] Lack of knowledge and skills towards sustainable project management and acquisition [29], [31] 6…”

“…Delivery Product delivery transition issues to user organizations [18] Requirement problems such as changing requirements, etc [24], [25] Scope problems such as overscooping, etc [25], [29], [31] Pressure on government to ensure rapid implementation while maintaining quality standards [28] Poor service provision in Agile delivery…”

“…First, human-related issues such as lack of coordination and trust between teams are the most common challenges mentioned [9], [19], [20], [21], [22]. Second, the lack of empowerment of employee skills so that employees find it difficult to understand new roles is a challenge that is also widely mentioned [23], [21], [24], [25]. Third, public organizations use a dominant rule-based (regulation) approach [26], [7], [19], [21].…”

“…Several other issues are found in implementing Agile in the public sector. In the stakeholder domain, namely the existence of low stakeholder involvement, competence, and transparency [9], [23], laws that prevent information sharing with stakeholders [23], lack of coordination, communication, and control between stakeholders [20], there is a negative influence of stakeholders on project requirements [30], and stakeholders have various conflicts of interest [31], [25]. In the team domain, there is a division of labor with command dominance from the leadership [26], difficulties in organizing an Agile team remotely [23], and lack of evaluation and performance awards by the team [24], and incompetent managers and developers [24].…”

MIDST: an enhanced development environment that improves the maintainability of a data science analysis

“…In general, maintenance (or actions taken after the first implementation) is an important aspect of a project's lifecycle [4] and as well as an important aspect of project management [5]. While project documentation can represent a valuable source of knowledge, it has been noted that the knowledge codified in project documents is typically not re-used in future projects [6].…”