HIGHLIGHTS
- USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service needed to modernize delivery of technical and financial services
- TSPi is using a scaled agile approach with 22 development teams
- Consolidating legacy systems and developing mobile applications are increasing functionality
PROJECT
Conservation Programs Contracts and Agreements “Money” Agile Release Train (ART)
The Challenge
The Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture Farm Production and Conservation (FPAC) mission area, promotes adoption of conservation practices through technical assistance and $6.8 billion of financial aid for more than 125,000 farmers, ranchers, and landowners. The agency’s goal is to foster clean and abundant water, healthy soil, resilient landscapes, and thriving agricultural communities through voluntary conservation. The services that NRCS provides include science-based planning, technology development and transfer, administration and delivery of conservation programs, and collaboration with local and state governments for delivery and assistance. Programs include emergency watershed protection, development of new plants for conservation, soil surveys, and snow surveys.
TSPi, a Division of Abt Global, has been supporting and assisting NRCS in improving the Nation’s private lands conservation through modernizing NRCS’s conservation software delivery services.
The Approach
TSPi leads 22 Agile development teams with more than 220 staffers comprising the Conservation Programs Contracts and Agreements Money Agile Release Train (ART). The Money ART teams conduct quarterly planning sessions to coordinate their work through joint program increment planning. This process is essential to align efforts across interconnected projects, ensuring that changes made by one team do not disrupt another team's code or functionality.
After the quarterly planning, the teams break into two-week sprints. They work with NRCS and other government stakeholders to determine, prioritize, and deliver on what often are complex business needs.
Money ART enhances information technology systems to facilitate end-to-end management of the farmers’ and ranchers’ applications for financial assistance to invest in conservation practices such as growing a cover crop that protects the soil and improves its health. The benefits can range from saving energy, improving soil and water, and improving water quality to enhancing wildlife habitat and stabilizing farmland conservation and stewardship. The systems also obligate, disburse, and track funds through the creation of new and easy workflows for, for example, processing invoice payments and deletions of or changes in the cost of items.
The Results
TSPi has expanded the functionality of existing systems, delivering more software systems that enable private land conservation and stewardship programs that farmers and ranchers can use. For example, TSPi is developing a Configurable Business Rules Engine (CBRES), an independent, standalone system slated to provide the pathway for the NRCS business owners to develop, manage, and publish the business rules for NRCS programs. That will speed up publication of new rules when a new farm bill passes by enabling our government partners to make changes to rules without the need of a development team.
As part of this work, TSPi is decommissioning 82 legacy applications and consolidating the functions into one primary platform, a ”single pane of glass,” titled the Conservation Desktop, which provides a common user interface for technical and financial assistance services for the nation’s ranchers and farmers. TSPi is also building mobile planning tools, which will save time for all stakeholders.