Deliver a Product
During this phase, the team applies Agile methods and mindset to continuously improve their process and product during time-boxed sprints.
Pre-conditions
- Executive sponsors support the direction of the product and the development of a plan to sustain and continuously improve it.
- There are resources and mandate confirmed to progress towards a Beta product.
What Success Looks Like in this phase
- A Beta product is delivered to people who will benefit from the service, so they can test new features as they are built.
- Code, documentation and Agile practices are healthy, with team velocity increasing.
- The team is sharing their success, challenges, and reusable code contributions with the community and their home organization.
- The product can facilitate an end-to-end service journey and can be announced broadly.
- There is a report on the value being delivered to date (return on investment)
Applicable Standards:
Deliver Working software
Within a few months of sprinting, a team will have delivered open source code that results in working software that becomes increasingly feature rich. Teams are supported to apply Agile Scrum methods, with sprints occurring between 1-4 weeks.
The Exchange Lab Offers:
- Troubleshooting challenges or barriers, including organizational development when frictions with Agile methods arise.
- Promotion of stories about milestones and open demos to build interest in the team and awareness of the product.
Test with Real users
A Beta product is released in imperfect condition, but with enough features to test with users to be able to get applicable feedback.
The Exchange Lab Offers:
- Connection to experts who can support user research methods and practices.
- Outreach to the network that can source users to engage.
Refine Team Process
As the team learns to be more Agile and understands the nature of the complex challenges they face, they will gain velocity. This is especially the case for teams that have supportive leadership and good connections to the community.
Agile practices include retrospectives so that a team can learn from each other and their collective experience. There is also value in hosting a retrospective for the Alliance team and Executive Sponsors with the Product Owner and Scrum Master. This enables the broader organization to refine how it supports the team - especially if the team has shifted their practices as they learn.
Measure Results
Agile teams have a high burn rate to solve focused problems founded in user research and other analytics. A Product Owner should be able to identify some key success metrics according to the product vision. The team can help identify the ways this value can be measured.
Each product team will find unique elements to measure. The Exchange Lab can support connection with exemplar teams who do this well, and is working to produce a framework, samples and templates that teams may adopt.
Results may include:
- improvements to the way the service is delivered (operational efficiency)
- value of service to the user (e.g. uptake, satisfaction, time to complete)
LabOps Resources:
- Lunch-n-Lab (AKA Quarantine & Quaffee): hour long event for active teams and community mentors to share learning.
- Value metrics guidance and templates (TBC)
- Re-alignment Session: 1-2 hours of facilitated reflection and sharing to discover how to optimize in the home stretch.
- Facilitator’s Agenda (TBC)
- Presentation materials (TBC)
- Pre-survey (or SenseMaker) questions (TBC)
Key Resources offered by our partners can be found on Digital.gov.bc.ca, such as: