Working with public institutions, patiently
Public-sector software moves slowly because the work is serious. The mistake is to mistake that slowness for resistance.
Public institutions are not slow because their teams are careless. They are slow because the records they keep matter to real people, and the process of changing a record has consequences that the rest of us rarely see.
The right posture, when working with a public team, is patience. Show up. Listen to the way the work actually happens. Ask which form is the one that the team is proud of, because that is the form that has been refined by a hundred small corrections. Then propose the smallest change that respects the form and removes the part that is breaking under load.
Done well, a public-sector engagement looks less like a launch and more like a long conversation. The wins are not the screenshots. They are the records that are correct because nobody had to fight the system to keep them correct.