How modern software is made

To know how software gets built today, there are six core concepts that agency leaders need to grasp:

User-centered design Agile software development Product ownership DevOps Building with loosely coupled parts Modular contracting There’s a short overview of each of these in GSA’s “State Software Budgeting Handbook,” which I co-wrote in 2019, so I won’t re-explain them here. It’s not enough for agency principals to read a paragraph about each of these, though. Without about an hour of training in each of these subjects, agency leaders can have a good base of knowledge to how projects are being executed—or should be executed—by vendors and agency staff.