Agile: A New Way of Governing

• Published date: 01 January 2021
• Author: Ines Mergel,Sukumar Ganapati,Andrew B. Whitford
• Date: 01 January 2021
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/puar.13202

Agile: A New Way of Governing 161

Public Administration Review,

Vol. 81, Iss. 1, pp. 161–165. © 2020 by

The American Society for Public Administration.

DOI: 10.1111/puar.13202.

Agile: A New Way of Governing

Abstract: The evolving concept of “agile” has fundamentally changed core aspects of software design, project

management, and business operations. The agile approach could also reshape government, public management, and

governance in general. In this Viewpoint essay, the authors introduce the modern agile movement, reflect on how it can

benefit public administrators, and describe several challenges that managers will face when they are expected to make

their organizations more flexible and responsive.

Government agencies are creating policies

for agile government and introducing new

practices and playbooks (e.g., GAO2012;

HUD2018). For instance, digital service teams such

as the U.S. Digital Service, the United Kingdom’s

Government Digital Service, and the Canadian Digital

Service have paved the way for working in an “agile

way.” State and local governments have adopted agile

and related practices through innovation labs and

civic service design teams (e.g., Georgia Technology

Authority, New York City). In these specific cases,

“agile” is a paradigm for better software development

and project management to avoid large-scale project

failures at the end of the project and funding

period (e.g., Mergel2016; Project Management

Institute2017). Agile is usefully contrasted with the

traditional “waterfall” method, in which each project

phase has to be carried out in sequence (see, e.g.,

Whitford2020). Government software projects are

designed and built to last for a long time. Planning and

building often takes years—and working software is

often outdated when it is finally released. Agile project

management values and techniques allow project teams

to work on smaller increments, review their work often,

and include feedback right away to avoid costly failures.

A quiet government transformation is already underway

among practitioners who are investing heavily in

working in agile environments and applying agile

approaches to software development and other types

of government problems. Traditionally, major changes

in the way government works are introduced either

through policy changes or through public management

reforms. Agencies are now changing their project

management techniques and even procurement practices,

incorporating new values and methods that are foreign

to classically “bureaucratic” organizations. Historically,

only emergency managers typically had to deal with

crisis situations in an agile way to respond to shifting

realities on the ground. In both practice and academic

settings, people often use “agility” interchangeably

with more familiar terms such as “responsiveness” or

“adaptive governance”—highlighting momentary change

from the standard operating procedures and leading

to a conflation of the terms (e.g., Janssen and van der

Voort2016; Wise2006). Moreover, the canonical

public administration literature has largely neglected

agile and the more fundamental changes it introduces to

hierarchical and bureaucratic organizations. For instance,

our search in Web of Science for the topic “agile”

revealed 26 research articles in “public administration,”

most of which were not related to the agile concept.

Based on years of collective experience interviewing

practitioners and documenting these changes, this

Viewpoint essay aims to introduce the agile concept to

the public administration community, bringing clarity

to the use of the concept and integrating it with other

more established concepts in public administration

such as responsiveness, resilience, and adaptability (in

contrast with more monumental public management

reforms such as New Public Management) (e.g., Greve

et al.2019). For clarity, academics can think of agile as a

new package of routines and processes embedded within

formal work groups and structures—as a pathway for

“nudging” organizational behavior toward higher-valued

outcomes. We proceed by describing its roots in the field

of software design. We then highlight key advantages

and challenges of an agile working environment in

government beyond its origins in software development.

What Agile Is and Why It Matters

Agile is such a recent phenomenon that most

governments are still learning how to apply it when

Ines Mergel

Sukumar Ganapati

Andrew B. Whitford

University of Konstanz

Florida International University

University of Georgia

Andrew B. Whitford is Alexander M.

Crenshaw Professor of Public Policy in the

School of Public and International Affairs

at the University of Georgia. He is also a

fellow of the National Academy of Public

Administration. His research concentrates

on strategy and innovation in public policy

and organization studies.

Email: aw@uga.edu

Sukumar Ganapati is associate

professor and former director of the

PhD program in public affairs at Florida

International University. His research

focuses on the use of information

technology in the public sector. His research

projects have been supported by the

National Science Foundation and the IBM

Center for the Business of Government.

Email: ganapati@fiu.edu

Ines Mergel is professor of public

administration at the University of Konstanz,

Germany, and a fellow of the National

Academy of Public Administration. She

conducts research ondigital service

transformation in the public sector, the

use of nontraditional technologies, and

innovative forms of collaboration with

public sector stakeholders.

Email: ines.mergel@uni-konstanz.de

Viewpoint Article