Week 2 at RFDS is over and I’m drowning in data.

Subtitle: All Flight Paths lead to data ….an RFDS (Royal Flying Doctor Service) Design Thinking update to the “all roads lead to Rome” scenario.

So it’s been quite a long week and productive week here in “the land Down Under”. Our IBM Corporate Service Corps sponsored project is making progress. We’re working with the Royal Flying Doctor Service (RFDS) and looking for opportunities to help them more easily obtain insights from their data. That sounds like such an easy thing to do….right? Just do a quick fly-by, generate some meaningful insights and run off. However, that’s not how it works. As with most things at IBM we have a well defined process to follow.

The first step was to understand the Client (RFDS) in the context of their operations. We did this via our pre-work where we spend the time going over their history, their good work and had initial meetings with the client over the phone. This generated context around our project.

The next step began when we arrived. We spent a week with the client clarifying our Statement of Work (SoW) and getting a better idea of our client’s operations. After an intense week we finally came up with an agreed to SoW. Then the real work began.

Week 2 was dedicated to analysis. During this week we spent time with our sponsors and interviewed RFDS leaders all around the country. We’re based out of Brisbane which is the headquarters for the Queensland Section of RFDS. This provided us with a unique opportunity in that in addition to performing interviews by phone we could actually meet with the local team in person. This provided valuable insight that one just cannot obtain by phone.

However, since we did have the ability to meet with people in person we also decided to run a Design Thinking Workshop in order to better understand the needs of RFDS through the lens of data analysis and reporting with a goal of identifying gaps that could be addressed. While there are many ways to get to achieve this goal, Design Thinking ensures that we focus on the client’s perspectives and needs.

This was one of our slides….the message being that everything that we must always focus on the Client Experience.

Our Design Thinking Workshop started with a Problem Statement. We wanted to know what metrics RFDS could be used to obtain additional insights into their operations. IBM’s Design Thinking provides a process for this….was anyone surprised about that?? :-)

Our process was quite simple.

We started by identifying personas which are fictitious but personalized users. We then performed stakeholder mapping in order to identify all of the people involved in or effected by data analysis, and then came up with “Needs Statements” which helped us to understand what they wanted from our data analysis.

During our session we made sure that everyone was heard and, more importantly, we arranged ourselves so that no-one was sitting next to a colleague. It helped to encourage better communication.

The whole process ensures a focus on the client’s needs and helps to ensure actionable output.

The principles of Design Thinking

Finally, key to the whole process is ensuring that everyone’s voice is heard. We do this through the use of post-its. In this manner, no one can speak over someone else. It’s a very powerful tool.

Performing a read-out discussing our input. Each person had a post-it of a different color. You can see visually that all five people on our table provided input…meaning that their voices were heard.

We obtained a great deal of insight from our workshop around what things would the client like to change. Our recommendations will come out of the analysis of their input.

However, Design Thinking wasn’t the only tool that we used. We also performed interviews with many stakeholders throughout the organization. As such, I’d also like to do a shout out to all of the hardworking RFDS personnel that we spoke with. They took precious time from their busy schedules to speak with these IBMs, with many different accents, who asked a lot of different questions. They are VERY patient.

During our project we provide status updates to our stake holders. This is a screen shot of one such meeting.

So, Week 2 is done and now it’s time to review our findings and come up with conclusions and hopefully some solutions. However THAT is something for Week 3.

Ciao for now,

Steve

p.s. In case you want some details on IBM’s Corporate Service Corps here is some detail around what we are: https://www.ibm.com/ibm/responsibility/corporateservicecorps/

and here is some detail around the Royal Flying Doctor Service and what they do: https://www.flyingdoctor.org.au/what-we-do/