People, Systems, and the unknown beast
A bit of context, I am tech curious but not technical in anyway! I like data but not obsessed with it, so that is my starting point. The challenge of managing a funding and support programme, is the need to deeply understand ‘people’ and how they interact with each other and within and alongside other people and organisations.
The People
For the initial version of Powering Up we went through a design process (combination of Double Diamond and Design Sprint) to understand the ‘people’ bit and what the programme needed to deliver. This then led onto, what did we need, in systems terms, to help manage it and make the programme accessible for community businesses and the people they needed to work with.
Power to Change is a Salesforce organisation but due to Powering Up needing to operate at pace, we decided to develop a Minimal Viable Product (MVP), using a low cost and low code alternative (Airtable), while we launched and expanded the programme. Once, we had tested it thoroughly, our aim was to move it over to Salesforce.
The system grew
As Powering Up moved from a COVID response programme, to a 12 month grant and support programme, the system to support it, grew and changed, as we delivered the programme. The beauty of low code products, like Airtable, is the ease by which you can adapt and tweak them to suit the needs of users. However, this has an ugly side!
The beast!
So, the ability to tweak and grow the system to match; our needs, the needs of the community businesses, and the contractors supporting the businesses, meant that we have created a complex and fairly effective system but we made errors along the way:
- not clearly documenting the changes
- not thoroughly doing an impact of the changes on the wider system
- not investing enough time in supporting the team to adopt the changes
Putting it right
Although, we knew that we were not documenting things well, we would not have been putting ourselves on the right course, if it wasn’t for getting an Airtable ‘expert’ to review where we were and where we needed to get to. It was a classic case of not seeing the ‘wood for the trees’.
So, we are now doing a full review of the system, ensuring we put users at the centred of what is needed. Like any digital project, the tool or product is the easy bit, its understanding the people, culture and mindset that are critical to making it a success or not.
N.B. The system has been developed by colleagues with the technical skills!
