The National Geospatial Technical Operations Center (NGTOC) is a 300 plus person organization responsible for nationwide accurate geospatial products. In 2014, they requested Xentity’s PMO services to evaluate, plan and implement best practices for software engineering. Also, general process improvements to help integrate efficiencies and effectiveness across all development teams. Throughout the project, Xentity provided data solution design services for a contract revolving around geospatial data.

Migration Support Through Agile

Xentity’s main role in this project was supporting the NGTOC Branch Chief for Innovations for migrating the entire system development team’s portfolio using Agile Project Management development techniques. At the time, the NGTOC noted several areas that needed improvement through the use of agile. This included: source code control, configuration management, testing, test automation, test-driven development, continuous integration, Agile development, Scrum, XP, sprint/release planning, requirements management/use cases/user stories, estimation, solution design, performance tuning, and deployment management.

Xentity led the design, configuration, and documentation of Agile software and collaboration tools (JIRA, Confluence, Google Apps, etc.) setup, knowledge transfer to NGTOC staff, ran daily scrums, incorporated into the overall governance cycle, provided coaching, and local assistance in two states. Xentity also demonstrated Systems Engineering, Requirements Analysis, Infrastructure Engineering, Development, Implementation, Integration, Enterprise Application Integration, Data Migration and Integration, Test and Evaluation Services, Collaboration Tools, Project Management Training, and Agile Project Management.

Agile Process Integrated

Through our design services, the NGTOC received the support it needed through the Agile process. In doing so, we improved their various activities and services. Xentity’s aid in designing and implementing best practices helped integrate an Agile process. Consequently, it improved efficiency and effectiveness across all development teams. And through these improvements, the NGTOC are better able to provide their nationwide geospatial products to its customers. In other words, NGTOC did not improve as an organization by building better products. Rather, it improved by building a better version of itself.