#workingintheopen

Our working style also incorporates agile sprint planning.

The first two weeks

We spent the first two weeks with our partners getting oriented, and doing free-form discovery; talking with folks, reading documents, reviewing previous research, trying to understand the problem space and organizational context, and getting situated.

We didn’t plan formal sprints; instead we created one Trello board for each week and added tasks as they emerged.

Halfway through this time, I learned about Sprint 0 from Cohort 2 #CodeForCanada PM fellow Siobhan.

Have you had any luck with Sprint 0? Is it useful?

Instead of Sprint 0, we used Sprint 1 to learn how to sprint as a team. We filled and prioritized the backlog, planned the sprint, updated and provided visibility throughout, and reviewed the sprint and did a retrospective together, continuously checking in with one another.

Although we did include substantial tasks, we were kind to ourselves if things were left incomplete.

Sprint planning schedule

Since then, we’ve been on a bi-weekly sprint schedule. The sprint schedule goes as follows:

[Ongoing] Gather activities for the backlog

[Sprint Day 1 - Monday] Sprint planning meeting

[Daily] Standup at 9:45am

[Sprint Day 10 - Friday] Sprint retro

How do you organize your sprint planning meeting, daily standup, and sprint retro meeting? When do you schedule them? What format works best for your team?

Sprint planning tools

We use Trello to build the backlog and tee-up the sprint tasks. This has a simple and straightforward Kanban format – backlog, todo, doing, done.

We tried a couple other Kanban mediums – colourful sticky notes & sharpies and writing on a whiteboard.

Although these are great for in-office visibility, ultimately Trello is our source-of-truth because it enables remote work and is accessible on mobile.

What tools or software do you use for sprint planning and tracking?

Maintaining and prioritizing the backlog

Since we’re still in discovery, our backlog tasks have been exploratory and high-level. For example, “map the policy landscape” or “build a framework to prioritize problems”.

I often refer to these as “choose-your-own-adventure” activities. In almost all cases, the person who proposed the activity was accountable for ensuring it got done. They had the best idea of how to approach the activity – whether it was individual research, a sticky-note workshop with the team, or setting up stakeholder interviews. But the approach became more visible as new information was uncovered.

Because these were mostly led by individuals, there hasn’t been much backlog maintenance or prioritization thus far.

At the beginning of a project, how do you balance your team’s excitement for individual initiatives and investigation, and prioritizing a backlog?

Looking forward

Change is inevitable. As our project progresses, we’ll reassess what works and what doesn’t, and adapt from there.

As we move into experimentation, our activities will become more concrete in scope and tasks. Our tasks will likely have to be estimated and the backlog groomed; priorities clearly communicated to ensure the team is aligned and moving in the same direction.

Week 21 | Monday November 11 – Friday November 15

After a solid couple of weeks of Design Sprinting, CanUX and FWD50 this week is to regroup and a chance to get some heads down time.

This is a short week as we took Monday off to observe Remembrance Day.

We had the opportunity to visit the Associate Deputy Minister Michael Vandergrift to talk about the future of GC Travel and show him some of our experiments.  He also broke in his new @DMA_PSPC twitter account by tweeting about the meeting.

I was heads down coding the Travel Estimator, a prototype idea we've had kicking around for a while now.  The estimator helps you plan your budget by pre-populating meals and per-diems, city rate limits and other accommodation allowances.  Developing this prototype actually meant updating an API experiment we’d created as well.

Next week, we’re testing with users! 

Week 22 | Monday November 18 – Friday November 22

It’s pretty surreal to think that we’re rounding out week 22 of 40 embedded with our partners. That’s 55%, whew!

We made serious headway this week:

Talked with 6 travellers and travel arrangers. Mostly focused in the NCR, but some in other provinces as well.

IF YOU’RE INTERESTED IN PARTICIPATING, SIGN UP HERE!

If you’re unable to access the GC Intranet at this time, please email me here, or DM me on Twitter here, and we can connect.

Made significant headway on organizing an upcoming pilot with a small test group, where we will be prototyping tools to test whether we can improve their travel experience if they had flexibility in where they booked their travel.

Opened the conversation with our comms team about how we can share our prototypes more widely.

Wrapped up the first version of a fully interactive, functional prototype that helps you put together a travel estimate.

Started getting feedback on the prototype to learn whether it satisfies user needs. (Does it help reduce the time to build an estimate? Does it reduce errors in the estimate?)

Got a local Postgres database set up to consolidate some large Excel files, and allow me to run SQL queries (my data bread and butter) on the historic travel data we have.

Developed a first draft of a current-state service blueprint.

Caption: Mike and Andrea discussing the travel estimate prototype.

Alternative caption: A woman with blonde hair and blue jacket stands holding coffee beside man with red jacket sitting in a chair. They are looking at a laptop computer hooked up to a monitor. They are in an office cubicle.

This week was heavily focused on the building and testing portions of our newly minted team slogan:

Learn & Build & Test & Repeat.

As a product manager, I’m stoked that we’re prototyping, seeking data to define success/failure of the prototypes, and getting feedback from real end users which is leading to… what is shaping up as a product backlog!

Another big turning point this week was changing our working style slightly. We’re shifting back to sprints -- but one week sprints! This will allow us to have really short, tight feedback loops from prototyping to getting feedback on it, and shifting direction based on the feedback very quickly before we invest any more time in a bad idea.

Week 18 | October 21-25

Last week was full of prototypes, and connecting with folks outside of our team. It’s important that we network outside of our own world because, among other things, (1) there are exciting projects happening all over, with lots of great ideas and parallels that we learn from and draw into our own work, (2) input to our prototypes makes them better and we learn about bad ideas faster, and (3) we capture more, better cross-disciplinary considerations.

Prototypes

I continued to update the content of the “Travel Guidebook” concept based on the latest information from folks across the Government of Canada.

How might we help newer public servants navigate the travel journey from end-to-end?

Andrea and Mike worked on another prototype -- a “Travel Estimator” to assist travelers in putting together a budget estimate.

How might we help public servants be aware of established city rates and limits?

Meetups

We hosted our second office hours at the NAC!

https://twitter.com/madsewins/status/1186669339119947776

We were delighted to join the TCUX Meetup (Transport Canada User Experience). Thanks to Noah for the invite, and Andee for singing it from the rooftops! We had a great conversation about using prototypes to “show the thing,” have better conversations, and learn quickly.

https://twitter.com/andeepittmanux/status/1187462321754562561

Sept 23 - 27, 2019 Sometimes it’s easy to forget the great things you’re doing when you’re down in the weeds. It’s great to show your work to others to see it through their eyes. 

Week 10 | August 26–30, 2019 | Team: Maddy (Product Manager / fellow), Andrea (UX Designer / fellow), Mike (Software Developer / fellow), Robyn (Sr. Product Manager / NextGen Travel), Daniela (UX Researcher / NextGen Travel)

Big themes this week were connecting with others outside of our core team through office hours and bringing our wider team into our process; and optimizing our research process by doubling down on research ops and preparing for our next round of research.

Sprint 3 | August 6 – 16

At the end of each sprint, our core team conducts a sprint retrospective where we reflect on the sprint and ask ourselves:

What went well? What didn’t go so well? What can we improve?

1. This sprint, we felt really good about doing things

Mike blogged, Maddy planned office hours, we actually put ideas to "paper", we made things, we prototyped and conducted user research

Action Items:

Continue to identify blogging opportunities as we work

Continue discipline-specific focus

2. We have some improvements to make in research ops + user testing

There was no movement on UXR onboarding form

The lines between the research team and the research we're doing are fuzzy

Planning and scheduling was last minute and rushed, need better screening and recruiting for interviews

Synthesis was a lot of transcribing, note-taking was a lot of work

We lost context with hand-written notes, and should try and find a way to get everyone listening to research

Action Items:

Mike is exploring audio recording

Andrea ran a research retro which helped identify some concrete things we can improve, and had a follow-up meeting with our research team about research ops and is suggesting tactical process improvements here

Mike committed to push UXR onboarding mechanism forward for Sprint 4

3. We encountered external blockers

Outside our core team; lots of folks are on vacation

Daniela was sick for a week

4. We had a good balance of ownership, collaboration, and time – and want to continue striking this balance

Mike had time to explore Rules as Code, Daniela felt ownership over her project’s direction, Andrea felt like we worked "together" during user interviews, Maddy had more focus time and felt more clarity over our direction

But we should take a step back and do more generative research (not only prototype evaluation)

Action Items:

To continue finding this balance, continue setting clear ownership over tasks by breaking tasks down into bite-size pieces

Meetings for decisions and sharing -- not doing work

5. We had more flexibility in where we worked!

Working from home day + GC coworking

Action Items:

Let's try "no meeting Wednesdays" or "work from home Wednesdays" by default, and if things come up we'll be flexible and accommodate meetings, etc.

6. We had some good and some bad in how we worked

The good -- less doubting ourselves mid-sprint, good daily collaboration sessions for Maddy/Daniela, sprint planning got more specific

The bad -- we didn't really use the Trello board, still feel like we're not communicating at the beginning with our partners/stakeholders, and lots of meetings still, Maddy felt less visibility into activities of the wider team

Action Items:

Try incorporating Trello in standup to give your daily report

Let's do a Monday team-wide weekly standup (1 min/team update)

Give updates to external stakeholders regularly

For meetings -- continue to ask ourselves if we have a role in meetings, and if it's not clear, ask the meeting organizer what they expect of you (DARCI)

Anything here resonate with you? Any suggestions for how we can improve? Drop us a comment below, or connect on Twitter!

Happy Friday!

We hosted our first office hours!

We had three goals:

To show some of our recent work [designing a prototype + testing the prototype], and get feedback.

To meet public servants championing similar innovation projects, and to spark conversations across teams and departments.

To share our experience with user research, and learn from the experience of others (something we’re deep in the weeds with right now).

(above) Office hours attendees discussing user research methods. At the downtown Ottawa GC coworking space.

Andrea facilitated a session to debunk some of the misconceptions about user research terminology. Sometimes, we throw around “user research” and “user testing” – but do those umbrella terms mean the same to each of us? How do our experiences using different methods differ?

We broke out into pairs or trios, and picked 2–3 different user research/testing methods to discuss; our experience with them, and if we didn’t have personal experience, what questions we had about them. Then, we came together as a group to share back.

(above) Andrea, UX Design Fellow, facilitating an activity about user research methods.

(above) Myself and Ali, #NextGenTravel team member and #GCAgent, discussing user research and testing methods we’ve had experience with in the past: eye tracking, diary studies, and usability testing.

(above) Notes from our activity.

As a group, we had experience with, or questions about, the following (from more generative to more evaluative methods):

Diary studies – useful to observe change over time

Workshops – used when you have no idea or hypotheses, what do you focus on?

Behavioural studies

Focus interviews

Hypothesis testing via different methods

Card sorting – helpful to map a process

Participatory design – involve users throughout the process

Co-design – focus on bringing users into the process instead of bringing the product to them

Usability testing – can users accomplish the task you want them to, where do they struggle?

Eye-tracking – useful to inform design decisions about where to order content, language, information hierarchy

Clickstream analysis – used to observe online interactions

This list isn’t near exhaustive, but was a great start to spark conversation – diary studies for drug testing, behavioural studies to test tobacco packaging, using co-design to bring users into the process and build a better, stronger product or service, etc.

Thanks to everyone that attended! We look forward to hosting a second office hours soon, sharing more work, and engaging in more discussions. Stay tuned on our blog for more until then.

– Maddy, Product Manager Fellow