Lessons learned v0.4

DIA– Draft in confidence. Jan 2017
DIA
Lessons Learned
What we learned on the
Discover Journey
Jan 2017

Lesson 1:
Start with the customer and test
your assumptions
Results:
 Conducting innovative inclusive research
involves: workshops, 50+ interviews, two
Marae visits and youth centre's around the
country. This allowed us to get a get wide
number of people of differing perspectives
and abilities. We used the resulting evidence
to build the Discover service.
 Conducting rounds of testing on six two week
sprints allowed us to refine quickly and gain
valuable customer feedback at every step.
Recommendations for action:
 This robust, quick way of engaging
customers should be standard on any
customer centred work.

Lesson 2:
A great team is vital.
Results:
 Having a mix of skills allowed us to be both
flexible and thorough and a small team (3
people) allowed us to move quickly on any
new ideas and changes of directions.
 Having a team get along and have fun meant
that innovative ideas were able to be brought
to life. E.g. building a chat bot
 The team was cross functional: from doing
traditional service design work to highly
specialised UX and UAT work they were
willing to work outside the job title. This
allowed the team to save on hiring and
recruiting.
 Bringing experts in and out of the project only
when needed allowed time and money
savings. One short contract saved $72k.
 Picking the right people so they complement
each others strengths and weaknesses is
vital to the success of any project.
 Only bring in experts for short term work
which is clearly defined.
“Put the right people in to do the job”—Lee

Lesson 3:
A permissive environment leads to
success.
Results:
 Having a permissive environment meant that
ideas could be carried out quickly and that
evidence for decisions could be gathered
quickly. E.g. We had an idea for a workshop
on Monday then ran the workshop on Friday.
 Having a permissive environment is essential
for any project to move quickly.

Lesson 4:
Manage risk at the front to avoid
delays.
Results:
 Sometimes there were challenges and some
delays in getting the right feedback from the
right people in a timely manner. Navigating
organisational processes proved challenging
at times.
 It was difficult at times to shift mind-sets to
what’s possible rather than what’s not.
Us: “Well, what should we do?”
Others: “We can’t tell you. I can only tell you it’s
not right.”
To mitigate a lack of direction we made
decisions based on the available information.
 Keeping the project in two week sprints
allowed us to change directions quickly
without being wedded to any one particular
solution.
 Projects should find out before interacting
with different business units, who the best
people to contact are for smooth delivery.
 Projects should keep the decision makers
informed at 2 weekly intervals so any
changes can be made quickly and easily.
“We didn’t do Agile, we were Agile.”—Lee

Lesson 5:
Cultivate supportive people
Results:
 The support of the DCE and senior
managers insured that the project could
avoid political and financial pitfalls.
 However going to people with a defined
piece of work ensured some resistance vs.
coming to us (open to help at the outset)
 Other times we were encouraged and able to
complete processes quickly in the
organisation. The key: finding supportive
people.
 Once we found the right people and mind-
sets in different teams we cultivated a shared
understanding of success which enabled us
to deliver in tight timeframes.
 Enablers—ask “Are you happy” (Trust us) vs
Blockers—tell you “You haven’t done
X” (Don’t trust us)
 Successful projects need support at the
highest levels to get across the line.
 At lower levels it’s essential to find the
supportive people (enablers) who help
projects deliver.

Lesson 6:
Re-using Smartstart.
Results:
 Catalyst & TSS already had experience on
Smartstart and this enabled us to recruit the
right people and speed up our delivery.
 Infrastructure reuse allowed us to cut down
on decisions.
 Code & docs reuse meant time and money
was also saved.
 The Coms team was reused, but the level of
involvement (with us) wasn’t enough to do
detailed work for us.
 Don’t blaze a trail, find a project that’s
recently done what you want to do and re-
use as much as possible.

Lesson 7:
Avoid political noise to keep
focused.
Results:
 We’ve had to delay some recommendations
(awaiting approval). We should of engaged
some agencies earlier.
 However we’ve done the work anyway, so
now we’re ready when we do get sign off.
 We dealt with issues head on by bringing
them to the surface and clearing the air.
 In order to deal with real issues we
recommend projects hold a meeting or a
workshop to bring them out in to the open.
Requires an experienced facilitator.
 Engage external organisations as early as
possible.

Lesson 8:
Challenging deadlines.
Results:
 Having a December deadline and a tight
budget ensured delivery.
 Avoid dead development zones such as the
Christmas break to ensure delivery.

“Helpful way to get info without having to do
much work.” —customer comment about Discover
service.
“3 years ago we had to tell the CE and all the way up
the chain, that we were going to talk to customers —
things have changed for the better” —Shane
Lesson 9:
Design lessons.
Results:
 Having the freedom to put aside predefined
solutions and assumptions and to start from
the ground up in partnership with the
customer is and should be, the only way.
 Having a big room dedicated to design made
holding workshops and performing analysis
and design much quicker and thorough than
before.
 Be clear about who’s doing what as soon as
possible.
 Having dedicated design space makes
design easier.

Lessons learned v0.4

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