On Becoming agile: The transformation from Waterfall to Agile in the Danish Tax Authority

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Abstract

This article presents an ethnographic study of how employees in the Danish Tax and Customs Administration grapple with implementing ‘agile methods’ (scrum and DevOps) in the ministry’s IT projects, and so speaks to growing interest in STS in public sector digitalization. The adoption of agile methods in public digitalization projects is becoming a key concern in the Danish public sector. Acknowledged as a ‘considerable change management project’ (Agency for Digitisation, 2019), the process of becoming agile is challenging a bureaucratic public sector used to working at a relatively slow pace, in a rule-following and non-experimental manner. Bureaucracy, it can be argued, is at its core non-agile, but agility prioritizes flexibility and rapidity over stability, hierarchy and rules, thereby challenging the bureaucratic ethos of the public sector and forcing work practices to change.
We observe and argue that the meaning of agility is flexible and ever shifting, an ‘empty signifier’ or ‘fluid concept’ (Law & Singleton, 2005; Laet & Mol, 2000). Public sector employees feel their projects and practices can always become ‘more agile’, leading to feelings of inadequacy as well as to boundary work regarding what gets to ‘count’ as agile (Burri, 2008). Agile is a process of becoming, it represents the future, not the present. Specifically, in the Danish Tax and Customs Administration, the agile transformation marks a desire to distance oneself from a past marred by scandals and failed IT projects, making becoming agile an even more pressing concern.

Author

• Irina Papazu, IT University of Copenhagen