What I learnt at the Government Digital Service
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What I learnt at the Government Digital Service
- 1. Anna Shipman Tech Director of Customer Products, Financial Times @annashipman What I learnt at the Government Digital Service
- 4. It was an exciting time to join government @annashipman
- 5. 1. Some things I learnt from the Government Digital Service 2. Some things GDS could learn from the Financial Times 3. Beer!
- 6. 1. What is the user need? @annashipman
- 7. @annashipman At GDS, people are relentlessly focused on user needs
- 8. Everyone looks at features and asks “What is the user need?” @annashipman
- 9. Everyone the team observes user research. Two hours every six weeks @annashipman
- 10. @annashipman
- 11. Properly understanding user needs stops people building products based on assumptions @annashipman
- 14. “What is the user need” frames a lot of interactions at GDS - not just product decisions @annashipman
- 15. 2. Have regular retrospectives @annashipman
- 16. Retrospectives are the only agile practice you need @annashipman
- 17. If you have regular retrospectives, with actions, you can solve any problem @annashipman
- 18. 3. The unit of delivery is the team @annashipman
- 19. All teams have retrospectives at regular intervals @annashipman
- 20. These happen as part of the rhythm of the sprint @annashipman
- 21. It doesn’t matter if everyone can’t make every one @annashipman
- 22. Because they happen so regularly, everyone is really good at them @annashipman
- 23. Everyone gets comfortable with talking blamelessly about things to improve next time @annashipman
- 24. People remember to celebrate the things that were good @annashipman
- 26. 3. Do the hard work to make it simple @annashipman
- 27. The Government Digital Service developers have phenomenally good git hygiene @annashipman
- 29. Pull requests are a point of pride among developers at GDS @annashipman
- 31. @annashipman a good PR somewhere that you can (briefly) talk through
- 32. @annashipman
- 33. Pull requests are designed to be as simple as possible to review
- 34. There is tooling on helping teams remember to review and merge pull requests @annashipman
- 38. @annashipman
- 39. @annashipman
- 40. @annashipman
- 41. Government Design Principle #4 https://www.gov.uk/guidance/government-design-principles
- 43. One of the Government Digital Service’s big successes was content design @annashipman
- 44. “Everyone can benefit from simplicity” Sarah Richards https://contentdesign.london/digital-transformation/history-of-content- design-in-the-uk-government/
- 45. @annashipman
- 46. @annashipman Sarah got us to stop using jargon that citizens couldn’t understand
- 47. Use simple, clear words @annashipman
- 49. @annashipman Jargon creates an in-group who know what it means, and an out-group who do not
- 51. No-one would get away with it @annashipman
- 52. What’s KMT? What’s TLG? What’s TGG? What’s PTE? What’s ETG? What’s FOMO? What’s KAT? What’s RFV? What’s MeMe?@annashipman
- 53. That’s all fine if you’re in the in-group who know what it means @annashipman
- 54. Let’s use fewer acronyms @annashipman
- 55. 1. Some things I learnt from the Government Digital Service 2. Some things GDS could learn from the Financial Times 3. Beer!
- 56. 1. We have a clear mission @annashipman
- 57. The newspaper is clear about what it’s doing @annashipman
- 58. @annashipman
- 59. It does not change at the whim of a minister @annashipman
- 60. “The FT has a vital mission in reporting and analysing the impact … Our role as a trusted guide has never been more important.” John Ridding (All Staff email after Brexit)
- 61. In tech, we have a key role in supporting this vital mission @annashipman
- 62. “No tech, no news” Lionel Barber Editor, Financial Times
- 63. Supporting the FT’s ground- breaking journalism gives us concrete objectives @annashipman
- 64. We have clear departmental objectives, and they are linked to our bonuses @annashipman
- 65. It’s easy to take this kind of thing for granted @annashipman
- 66. It’s extremely valuable to have a stable mission @annashipman
- 67. Good communication doesn’t make up for a changing mission @annashipman
- 68. 2. We are data driven @annashipman
- 69. The Financial Times’ use of data to inform decision making is really good @annashipman
- 70. The FT has invested in its data infrastructure @annashipman
- 71. This allows us to test ideas robustly, and be confident in the ones we drop @annashipman
- 72. Recency, frequency, volume (RFV) is our engagement metric @annashipman
- 73. @annashipman In September 2017, Project XX combined data with newsroom expertise to select articles likely to be popular with women
- 74. “After reading their first Project XX article, we saw that these women had a sustained increase in engagement up to 4 weeks later” Lindsay Nicol https://financialtimes.facebook.com/notes/lindsay-nicol/project-xx- increasing-female-readership/347761952334699/
- 76. @annashipman RFV allows us to do things that simply would not be possible without it
- 77. Many companies would love to have enough data for something as meaningful as RFV @annashipman
- 78. 3. Making people feel valued @annashipman
- 79. This is something we really missed at GDS @annashipman
- 80. Rewards, rounders, away days, the culture club, bonuses, training, enhanced maternity/paternity leave, occupational health, a recovery room, free tea and coffee, subsidised canteen, beer, pizza, coaching, mentoring, conferences, hosting meet ups… @annashipman
- 82. It’s very easy to forget that these things are optional @annashipman
- 83. At GDS we didn’t even get free tea and coffee @annashipman
- 84. Here, after this talk, there is free beer* in the canteen *and soft drinks @annashipman
- 85. 1. Some things I learnt from the Government Digital Service 2. Some things GDS could learn from the Financial Times 3. Beer!