“We started seeing the pace of change and the demand of shortening that [delivery] time… our mission sets as they were talking about, demanded that kind of responsiveness. And so we also learned from a history of waterfall projects that we really needed to think of a different way of working.”
— Tim Argabrite, Assistant Section Chief, FBI Criminal Justice Information Services, Information Technology Management Section
Industry:
Government, Law Enforcement, Public Safety
Quick Facts:
- Approximately 3,000 people work in the CJIS Division
- CJIS adopted SAFe in 2017
- Launched initially with 7 ARTs in 18 months
- In 2019, they began implementing SAFe at the portfolio level
Key Takeaways:
- Start where you are
“We didn’t start from the portfolio and come down. We went to the essential level and started at the program level. We focused on our IT systems because they aligned with our funding streams. So that made it something that we felt the division could rally around and understand how to organize around our systems. So it kind of gave us that value stream value delivery, although we knew it wasn’t perfect, it was our starting point.” -Gina Dobbins, Management and Program Analyst, FBI - Put the writing on the wall
“We had a room dedicated where our executives went up and one of the first things that we did – I would highly encourage it if you’ve not done it with your executives – is to literally put the writing on the wall. Start with sticky notes or big sheets of paper and just start to visualize even in that capacity and it’s really, really powerful.” -Alicia Cienawski, Supervisory Management and Program Analyst, FBI - Use local context
During LPM class, the team used their current state to map out their portfolio. “We used our local context and kind of just drafted out at that table what LPM would look like for us. We drafted out our current state portfolio canvas, what some of the things we thought would go onto our Kanban board, and then really took those outputs from that class and used that for our next steps when we got back to CJIS” -Gina Dobbins, Management and Program Analyst, FBI
Overview
Criminal Justice Information Services is the largest division of the FBI. It includes approximately 3,000 people dedicated to the mission of protecting the American people and upholding the laws of the United States.
The division operates from a high-tech, 500,000-square-foot office in West Virginia and offers services and tools that assist law enforcement, national security, intelligence community partners, and the general public. This includes the public-facing 800-CALL-FBI tips program, which receives about 4,000 calls and electronic tips per day. Other programs include the National Threat Operations Center, and the National Instant Criminal Background Check system, which provides all firearm background checks. In addition, the division houses the National Crime Information Center, which is a large data hub that shares with law enforcement partners nationwide.
How does an organization process that much critical information and data when the stakes are so high? Speed of execution and accuracy are paramount. Alignment is also incredibly important. When you’re dealing with information systems that function across federal, state, and local law enforcement partners, there has to be a high degree of alignment, transparency, and interdependence. Taking inspiration from IT, the CJIS division understood that SAFe was the best framework for achieving these goals.
“From a government perspective, we really liked the fact that it was a framework with some common terminologies and was scalable,” notes Gina Dobbins, Management and Program Analyst at the FBI. “This was something that was really appealing to us.”
“CJIS initiated our safe transformation in 2017, and what prompted us to initiate this safe transformation was we were getting ready to develop another IT system and it was going to be a large development project. Typically, all of our IT development projects were done in an agile methodology, and this was something we were very comfortable with doing, but at the same time we felt that a different approach was needed. Around that same time, we had a couple small teams doing agile methodologies. So that prompted us to look into Agile because we were hearing some good feedback about the things that these teams were able to do and the value that they were providing. Through this research, we learned about the SAFe framework. From a government perspective, we really liked the fact that it was a framework with some common terminologies and was scalable. This was something that was really appealing to us.”
— Gina Dobbins, Management and Program Analyst, FBI
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