Digital Service Design Weeknotes 7th–21st September
The weeknotes for this sprint are brought to you by Melanie Wong and Rachel Cull, our Subject Matter Experts.
Introduction to the Investment Management Service
Emily Fuller, our Grants & Investment System Support Manager, delivered a session for new staff members, providing them with an initial overview of the IMS. This was the first session of its kind and its aim was to give attendees confidence with using the IMS and the knowledge of where to go for further information.
Firstly, Emily talked the group through signing into the IMS, explained the different parts of the service and how to navigate through the screens, as well as integrating to Outlook and finding and sending emails. She showed how to find documents and how to create and assign tasks, plus creating list views and favouriting projects. All important things for anyone wanting to find project information!
Next, Emily highlighted the importance of the Knowledge Hub and showed the group where to find the IMS guidance. Lots of new guidance has been added recently, both in text and video form. As we develop and make available new parts of the service, new guidance will be added.
The session finished with a great question and answer session and gave us a few things to go away and think about when iterating and developing the service further.
We’ll be looking at creating an Introduction to IMS video covering these points to incorporate this within our existing guidance offer.
IMS Surgery
We held another busy IMS Surgery on Wednesday 15th September. Jamie McGarrigle, Product Owner for the Investment Management System, expertly led the session. Thank you to everyone who came along and asked questions.
Topics covered included the legal agreement journey for small and medium grants, documents and email attachments within the IMS, list views and how to see what actions are needed on projects.
The session was also helpful for the Team to hear how staff are using the service, and to better understand some of the issues that users are facing.
Pre-Application Workshop 2: The Purpose
We also delivered our second Pre-Application workshop on Wednesday 15th September. Building on the insights we gathered from the first workshop, The Context, this workshop was focused on reviewing the purpose of the pre-application process from a strategic perspective, analysing the why’s and imagining what could be changed or improved.
Led by Rosa Fernandez Cerdan, our Service Designer, with support from Melanie and Rachel, the session began with an introduction to the work we have done so far, before we split off into 3 groups to delve deeper into the process.
Firstly, we discussed the purpose of the pre-application process, using the below matrix to think about the differences in how developed a project is when they approach the Fund for support and therefore how that affects the support we give them.
Secondly, we talked through a range of identified problem statements relating to the process, from both an applicant/grantee and staff perspective, before deciding as a group how far we agreed with each of the statements, and what could be done to overcome these.
Following the workshop, we sent a survey to all participants to find out how they felt the session went overall, to share any thoughts they didn’t have chance to on the day, and any thoughts on how we might improve future workshops.
We had a great mix of colleagues from across the Fund in different roles, which really helped bring different perspectives to the discussions. Just like with the first workshop, the findings from this one will help shape the content of our third and final workshop on Wednesday 29th September.
Temporary Process Guidance
We published interim guidance for staff on what to do on the IMS after a large project is awarded, after the September Committee meetings. This is temporary guidance for a manual process, to make sure that staff aren’t held up as they inform grantees of the decision and start the legal agreement process.
Work on building the legal agreement processes into IMS continues at pace as our Developers work on linking up the data in Salesforce Experience where grantees submitted their large applications, with our grantee-facing side (Funding Front End).
Nature Networks applications
The Nature Networks Fund aims to improve the condition and resilience of marine and land protected sites networks in Wales. This week we released 12 large application forms to organisations who passed the Expression of Interest stage, so they can begin writing their application.
The aim of the programme will support green recovery through reversing the decline in nature, addressing impacts of climate change, supporting economic recovery and increased engagement with vulnerable and most affected groups, communities and places.
