to iterative delivery, and shield teams from bureaucratic drift. In a recent Air Force logistics au- tomation project, the PM embedded herself with the development team twice a week. She joined backlog re- finement meetings and regularly co- ordinated with the user community to prioritize the next sprint’s work. More importantly, she prenegotiated streamlined contract mod procedures with the contracting officer, allowing the team to pivot development priori- ties without months of delays. Program managers also have a responsibility to establish Integrated Product Teams (IPTs) that are cross- functional, cohesive, and engaged in daily decision-making. Communica- tion is continuous, not periodic. Feed- back is real-time, not retrospective. The Government Accountability Of- fice has emphasized the importance of continuous user engagement. PMs must ensure that engagement re- mains central to the delivery process. Misaligned contract types often constrain agile programs. For ex- ample, applying hardware-centric cost-type contracts to software de- velopment can reduce flexibility and prioritize documentation over prog- ress. PMs must collaborate early with contracting officers to ensure vehicles reflect the adaptive, modular nature of agile delivery. What Senior Leaders Should Stop Doing One of the greatest obstacles to agile success in the government is the persistence of a leadership mind- set rooted in oversight, not ownership. Senior military officers and SES mem- bers often view their role as external evaluators—checking compliance, authorizing decisions, and conduct- ing milestone reviews, rather than as accountable participants in delivery. This model, inherited from hardware acquisition, is fundamentally mis- aligned with how software teams op- erate. In agile, and especially within Scrum-based teams, leadership must be embedded and active. Gate
Leadership in an agile context must shift from passive oversight to active enablement. Army Gen. Norman Schwartzkopf once said: “Leaders do not deal with how to get the job done; they surround themselves with talent and then allocate resources and remove roadblocks to enable the talent to excel.” His approach applies equally in industry and government.
may be sufficient. But in software, especially within Scrum teams, this detachment becomes a liability. Leadership that engages only through milestone reviews or quarterly check- ins actively hinders delivery by forcing the team to wait on decisions, approv- als, or clarifications. Worse, it signals to the team that the burden of deliv- ery rests solely with them, eroding psychological safety and ownership. Without embedded leadership, agile becomes performative rather than productive. This pattern repeats across pro- grams. PMs who treat agile as a compliance exercise by mandating velocity metrics without removing delivery blockers create teams that appear busy but deliver little. Re- viewing progress is different from enabling progress. Practical Lessons From Industry Commercial firms such as Capital One have shown that embedding cy- bersecurity and compliance special- ists within agile teams improves both delivery and assurance. Rather than evaluate systems at the end, these
specialists participate throughout the development life cycle. Modern software delivery uses automation and continuous integration and con- tinuous deployment pipelines not only to deploy code but to validate it continuously. This model reduces rework, compresses feedback loops, and embeds accountability into deliv- ery processes. The warfighting community can adopt these principles. Cybersecu- rity assessments, for example, can be embedded into sprint-level activities, with automated scans and real-time feedback replacing static document review cycles. Legal, testing, and governance teams can participate in product reviews alongside developers and users. Doing so creates a culture of shared ownership. The Program Manager’s Role Program managers are uniquely positioned to shape program culture and tempo. In agile settings, they are not compliance enforcers. They are designers of the operating environ- ment. Effective PMs secure stable resources, align contract structures
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