Background

Like any organization with unique requirements and challenges, the IRS must develop its own software when commercially available solutions are unable to meet their needs. Since the 1960’s, the IRS has had great success in writing custom solutions that support the agency’s mission. Having great pride in building systems that can last for generations, the IRS takes every measure to make sure its coding is of the highest quality.

Challenge

The eAuthentication system, which provides registration and login capabilities that protects mission critical taxpayer functions, requires extensive custom applications and custom subsystems to meet federal requirements. Custom code is also needed to integrate over a dozen commercial off-the-shelf products. With the IRS ever increasing its online presence while the government continues to add more regulatory requirements, the eAuthentication system is constantly changing. The IRS needed a new development methodology to help overcome this challenge.

The Solution

For years the IRS followed a waterfall approach to development. This worked well for long project lifecycles. Time was not a luxury eAuthentication had. Working with CA Technologies and then IBM and the IRS, STP’s developers transitioned to the Agile methodology. Through the use of Agile, STP’s developers and testers work on collaborative cross functional teams with IBM and IRS business owners to plan, design and build small increments of changes over short durations. By using Agile, STP is able to rapidly produce high quality code to meet the system’s ever-changing responsibilities.