About this episode
Meet Kevin Sutherland of SI Delivery Consulting
Kevin Sutherland is doing bold things to bring agile methods to large-scale government. He went from early days with Accenture, through first-hand experience with waterfall and the pitfalls of massive system delivery, to founding his own company focused on state-level innovation. Kevin isn’t just theorizing about agile transformation, he’s in the trenches, dealing with resistance, bureaucratic inertia, and public stakeholder pushback.
Kevin discusses what makes public sector agile so distinct and challenging. What are the unique obstacles in government (political incentives, captive user bases, absence of commercial profit motives) that make scaling agile so complex? Regulation, oversight, legacy systems, and decades of policy layering are persistent blockers that most commercial agilists rarely encounter. Many true agile practitioners just avoid or walk away from government environments, choosing not to engage because the culture or ecosystem isn’t receptive.
You’ll hear what Kevin is actually testing and using in a time when agile has become a dirty word in many orgs, and how he finds ways to deliver value without strictly using “agile” terminology or dogma. You’ll hear about the incremental approach and the transformational strategies he’s developing in Minnesota. You’ll also learn about the tension between short-term, emergency-driven bursts of agility and the longer, harder work of organizational transformation.
His strategy in action starts with outcome-focused use cases, and creating a safe, incubator environment for experimentation to enable change without risking the status quo. Getting buy-in from the willing, finding pockets of urgency, and managing vendor relationships in environments where incentive structures aren’t naturally aligned are some of the ongoing challenges.
Underlying everything is the growing pace of technological change, especially with AI reshaping expectations about speed and delivery. It’s difficult to know what agile principles look like when roles themselves are changing, and the fundamental problems aren’t getting better on their own.
There are never simple answers, but Kevin’s work will give you a clearer sense of the complicated, often contradictory world of government agile and why persistence, honesty, and outcome orientation matter so much.
You can find Kevin Sutherland at:
https://si-delivery.com
Minnesota MES Modernization Strategy RFI Mural Board – includes the strategy videos and links as well as the results of vendor feedback and engagement:
https://app.mural.co/t/minnesotamesmodernizationcan3670/m/minnesotamesmoderniz
