From Traditional to Agile E-Government Service Development: Starting from Practitioners’ Challenges

E-government refers to the use of Information and Communication Technologies by governments to deliver their information and services in an optimal way. For a long time, traditional systems development methods such as the waterfall model have been prevailing in the development of e-government services. However, these methods fail to welcome the changing requirements of citizens and to facilitate collaboration with a higher number of stakeholders. Agile software development methods implement practices that can increase responsiveness and collaboration. However, the implementation of agile methods faces challenges sometimes linked with intrinsic characteristics of governments. In this paper, we identify and validate challenges that practitioners face when developing e-government services in an Agile way. In order to reach that goal, we have organized three focus groups with practitioners in Belgium. The identification of these challenges will set the foundation for the tailoring of agile methods to the specificities of e-government.