The document summarizes a presentation about building the GOV.UK website from the UK Government Digital Service. It describes the project of building a single domain for the UK government with a focus on citizen needs. The team consisted of around 30 people. Some of the things they liked included the people, dashboards for monitoring, continuous integration, and open source code. Things they wanted to improve included the working environment, processes, managing complexity, the development environment, and knowledge sharing.

1. Learning from building GOV.UK
Cambridge Geek Night 20th February 2012
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2. Gareth Rushgrove
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3. Text
Work at UK Government Digital Service
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4. Serious Government Business
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5. Blog at morethanseven.net
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6. Curate devopsweekly.com
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7. The Project
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8. - A Beta of a Single Domain for Government
- Focus on Citizen needs; Business and Government comes later
- Built in-house, at the new Government Digital Service
- Not just a site, the start of a platform
The Project
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9. The Team
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10. - 1 Product Manager
- 2 Project Managers/Fixers
- Roughly 10 Developers and Designers
- Roughly 20 Editors
- Occasional other colleagues and friends
The Team
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11. 31st January
On Time, Under Budget
Ship
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12. - Three individual sessions: process, technology, content
- Each between one and two hours
- Focused on institutional (over individual) learning
- Run by someone not directly involved in the project
- Used more than 500 post-it notes
The Retrospectives
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13. What We Liked
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14. 1. Nice People
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15. 2. Dashboards
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16. - Great places to experiment with new technology
- Can never have too many screens
- Good way of highlighting problems quickly
- Great conversation starters
* More information on our dashboard collection at http://digital.cabinet-office.gov.uk/blog/radiating-information
2. Dashboards*
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17. 3. Really Continuous Integration
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18. - Visibility of test results
- Continuous deployment to a ‘preview’ environment
- Log of what was deployed when and by whom
- Ad-hoc task automation - cache purges, error page updating
- Jenkins makes an excellent platform
3. Really Continuous Integration
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19. 4. Coding in the Open
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20. - Nearly all code public on GitHub
- Already accepted a pull request from outside Government
- Asked “why private?” rather than “why public?”
- Interest from Quebec, New York and Brazil and more
4. Coding in the Open
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21. What We Would Change
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22. 5. Working Environment
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23. - Project team should have a focussed physical space
- Limit disruption and noise as much as possible
- Keep monitors, cables, power supplies as identical as possible
5. Working Environment
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24. 6. Tighten Up Processes
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25. - Stories should be written cross-team
- Define value for every story
- Estimate story size separately from sprint planning
- Consider support and maintenance process from the start
6. Tighten Up Processes
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26. 7. System Complexity
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27. - Invest time in getting a clear shared view of the model
- Use Domain Driven Design or a similar formal tool
- Don't be afraid to continually review
- Hindsight is a wonderful thing, use it
7. System Complexity
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28. 8. Development Environment
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29. - More automation of a standard environment
- Invest time in better, simpler, shared view
- Ongoing effort, not just upfront cost
8. Development Environment
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30. 9. Knowledge Sharing
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31. - Limit Work-In-Progress to force more collaboration
- More pairing
- New things should be sold to others
- Create a physical environment that makes sharing easier
9. Knowledge Sharing
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32. - Nice People
- Dashboards
- Continuous Integration/Deployment
- Open Source
- Working Environment
- Process
- Complexity
- Development Environment
- Knowledge Sharing
Your Next Project
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33. - Web - https://www.gov.uk
- Github - https://github.com/alphagov
- Blog - http://digital.cabinet-office.gov.uk
- Feedback - https://getsatisfaction.com/govuk
More Information on GOV.UK
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34. We’re Hiring
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35. Questions?
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