Platform research & development

How to manage an educational technology project with an external organization

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How many times have you been asked to work on something without having the whole picture? I believe the notion of ‘Learning on the spot’ can be used in every field of work but also in all work sectors (public, private, etc.).

My name is Josianne and I want to share my experience of a project I have been working on called GCshare. These are my reflections as a public servant working in a UX (User Experience) team and as an individual with a Master’s in IT (Information Technology) Management from HEC Montreal.

I am a detail-oriented person. I love reading articles and knowing more about the author of the articles I find online, as it helps draw a picture of the person ‘behind the scenes’ and it gives an opportunity to think by putting yourself inside of the author’s shoes. If you want to know more about me, there is a section about my experiences and background at the end of this article.

About the project

The idea behind GCshare was to develop a new platform where learning resources could be uploaded and made available to public servants and the public. We could call this an open library where users would be able to build new resources from existing learning resources.

Phase 1 of the project — also known as the minimal viable product (MVP) — took 12 months to complete, and it included the following stages:

1. Project initiation stage (2 months duration)
2. Project planning stage (5 months duration)
3. Project implementation stage (5 months duration)

Project initiation stage

Reading past documentation & stakeholders:

I joined the project while it was already underway. I felt it was important to speak with the stakeholders and other parties involved before diving deeply into this case. I also consulted the existing documentation because you know — I am a detail-oriented individual.

In this documentation, there was the business case which described and illustrated the business needs and the whole vision to have it approved by the Canada School of Public Service (CSPS) and to make sure that the project could be viable and useful for CSPS and its users. Another important document not to forget was the risk analysis which included a list of ‘possible threats’ in terms of security or other types of threats for the parties involved in this project.

This preliminary analysis can help decide if the project will be implemented. Reading past documentation and meeting stakeholders is the major step before starting to work on a project when it is already underway and to understand and visualize the whole picture without redoing the work already done and making the same ‘past mistakes’.

Project planning stage

Building procurement documentation folder

To hire an external company at the School, we needed to make sure that we were following several important steps:

1. Security review: Before moving forward, the IT security team needed to make sure that the external company met the security requirements of the School.
2. Privacy review: The Access to Information and Privacy (ATIP) team reviewed an internal checklist that helped figure out if the platform would store personal information such as name, last name, and Personal Record Identifier (PRI).
3. Review of the external company’s proposal: The step where the external company sent the proposal for CSPS’s review (prices and milestones).
4. Creation of the Statement of work (SOW): This is the most important piece included in the final contract. Once completed and reviewed by the external company, this was added to the final contract and then the company was required to sign it before starting to work.

Project implementation stage

There are many elements to consider at this stage of the project.

• Task distribution: Making sure each team member involved knows what they are accountable for and how their work affects the work of others
• User testing & competitive analysis: Before starting the implementation, we needed to have our designs ready to go. To make sure our visuals would meet users’ needs, we conducted a competitive analysis and usability testing. The users helped us improve the designs through their feedback.
• Shared folder for all project documents: To make sure things were organized, we created a single place where all project files would be stored such as images, mockups and translations.
• Introduction meeting: It’s crucial to have the first meeting where everyone can introduce themselves and start to talk about business needs, timelines and deliverables of each milestone for every team member to be on the same page.
• Recurrent weekly meetings: We planned recurrent meetings every Tuesday to get weekly updates to avoid surprises.
• Weekly progress update emails: One day or so after each meeting, our team would send a follow up email summarizing the work done and outstanding items for next week for both the CSPS and the external company
• Quality assurance (QA): This step can be different from one work environment to another. In fact, we performed our quality assurance page by page once the designs were ready. We also managed the work internally where myself and one of my colleagues ksenia cheinman could focus on our areas of expertise. She would work on the pieces about content and metadata, while I would work on the functionalities and visuals.
• Accessibility Quality Assurance (AQA): We linked the domain to an automated accessibility testing tool where we were able to see the evolution of the platform and its accessibility levels.

Experiences & recommendations

Pre-implementation stage — Procurement

I would say that this step was the most difficult in which I did not have any training on how to fill out the documentation. In addition, no written process existed. I needed to reach out to stakeholders and get my team’s help to get this step done well. The good thing is that I know now how to build a procurement folder from beginning to end.

Pre-implementation stage — Presentations

The CSPS has several teams playing completely distinct roles. To promote the tool in the pre-implementation stage, one-on-one informational meetings were held to address user needs. Since these stakeholders are the main users of the platform, the team turned to a collaborative approach, i.e., the user-centered approach, to address their immediate needs.

The presentations made to senior management incorporated the user-centric approach while adding a more collaborative way of sharing the vision and to-the-point grain of salt to share a clear and brief message and gain their support throughout the project.

By targeting the stakeholders and breaking down their needs at the beginning of the project, it was easier for us to reach them and get their support.

Pre-implementation and implementation stages — External company

At first, I thought this project would be on the right track and would follow the proposed timelines. Like any similar projects and with projects being outsourced, it took more time to complete. It was a long journey, but I learned so much by leading this project.

I’ve managed outsourced projects in the past and the thing I’ve learned is that each external company is different, their processes are different, and this is also true for every project.

The challenge between working with an external company and internal resources is project management.

Indeed, although CSPS has tried to apply the agile methodology, some companies follow a more conventional method called the Waterfall methodology where each step must be completed one after the other.

In fact, the agile approach should be used when

“a project team develops a solution step by step and coordinates respective interim results with the customer in very short cycles [1, 2, 3, 4]. One reason for adopting this method is that the customer or user of the project result specifies general requirements but cannot specify these in detail in early project phases”1

There’s another method called Hybrid approach used

“to enrich the plan-driven process model with agile principles, thereby combining the advantages of both methods: The “big picture” is planned with a plan-driven waterfall process, but suitable subprojects are managed in an agile manner. Using high-frequency communication and short feedback cycles, subprojects take advantage of agile characteristics such as transparency and adaptability but follow the overall structure of a higher-level, classical project plan.” 2

In some cases, it’s more suitable for a better understanding of both parties to choose a similar approach to get the best outcomes from a project like GCshare.

Next steps

On a final note, the next steps in this project will likely be to integrate the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat (TBS) style guide into the current platform to make the user experience consistent with the government look and feel. Similarly, when this step is complete, GCshare can be integrated into the School’s new learning platform that I am working on in parallel.

Incorporate the style guide into the GCshare design

The uniformity of the new products/systems will make it easier for users to recognize and trust the ownership of these official Government of Canada systems/platforms. There is probably more work to be done, as many comments about the confusion between the different CSPS platforms have been known for several years. The goal behind this approach will be to help the public servants set up the platforms that already exist by providing a description and the role each one plays.

Integrating GCshare into the CSPS Learning Platform

This iteration is one that will require extensive research into the feasibility, risks and need for integration of the GCshare platform into the new CSPS learning platform.

Retaining and attracting user interest in the GCshare platform on a broader scale

Keeping the interest of current users can be more challenging though a strategic plan was completed at the beginning of the project. For this reason, our team is working hard to keep the platform current (we already have 50 open educational resources in GCshare) and to continue to engage our users in sharing learning content available to all.

Again, our goal is to share open learning resources across the Government of Canada to increase the quality of our learning while reducing duplication of learning resources developed in silos. This is meaningful to me because I like to save people time by sharing open education resources they can repurpose without restrictions, whether it is an academic article, an online course, or a course shell template. In fact, I believe it should be easy to find valuable online resources.

About Josianne

I started as a student in a three-year post-secondary multimedia program. Back then, I learned all about Web (html, CSS, JavaScript, .php), graphic design, audio, and video. This is where I started to think about what I wanted to pursue. Around this time, I was hired by the Canada School of Public Service (CSPS) as a COOP student. My job was mostly about creating online courses for the CSPS (graphic design and web development).

After this program, I continued to work as a student at CSPS and while also receiving my Bachelor’s degree in graphic design. This program taught me a lot about trends and autonomy. In addition, I learned even more about getting to know other countries and values when I went for one semester (4 months) to study in France. This experience helped me a lot in terms of my personal development.

Most of all, this degree helped me make the decision to go further. I ended up pursuing a Master’s in IT Management to learn more about IT processes, information architecture, project management, UX, research and more. I experienced problems with the Phoenix pay system, I wanted to know more about this project and what problems others experienced. This was the premise of my thesis: Conceptualizing and Measuring the Impacts of the Government of Canada’s Payroll System (IS) on Public Servants. During my last year of school, I was promoted to supervisor of the multimedia development team. I would say that this position gave me a lot of experience in people management but also in project management.

Since the end of my university career, at least for now, I have moved into a Senior Project Officer role at CSPS. I am working on several projects linked to learning systems. My areas of responsibility include designing systems, creating and analyzing UX surveys, managing projects and external companies, creating new processes (service design) and more.

If you would like to get in touch with me, please feel free to reach me on LinkedIn.

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References

1 Agile versus Waterfall Project Management: Decision Model for Selecting the Appropriate Approach to a Project (Theo Thesing, Carsten Feldmann & Martin Burchardt)

2 Idem