Digital First Assessments: a guiding light for product teams
Editor’s note: As part of the 2019 Ontario Budget, the government is making existing online services easier to use, and making more services available online. We are starting with enhancing ServiceOntario’s top 10 transactions, which include driver’s licences, health cards and vehicle permits. Sarah is a Team Lead with the Product Chapter in the Ontario Digital Service.
Hi, I’m Sarah, a Product Manager in the ODS Product Chapter. I’m currently leading a multidisciplinary team working on the Top 10 transactions initiative highlighted in this year’s provincial budget.
We’re in the early Discovery phase of this exciting mission to design consistently good online services based on the points set out in Ontario’s Digital Service Standard. This is a big change in the way that services are built inside government, and comes with a few challenges:
- collaborating with partners across multiple ministries who have diverse needs
- working with subject-matter experts who have different levels of familiarity with the Digital Service Standard
- working within a product-centred delivery structure
- delivering a product with a broad scope.
When I first heard about Digital First Assessments — a new process developed to assess opportunities for digital transformation — I was nervous. As a Product Manager, my job is to keep the team focused on the cycle of discover, design, test and iterate. I worried that an assessments process would slow us down. So, I attended an orientation session about how we were going to implement assessments at the ODS. Here’s what I learned (spoiler alert: it’s good news for product teams!).
What is a digital assessment?
Digital Assessments help product and service design teams describe the problem being confronted, articulate user needs, explain how the team plans to meet these needs, and surface blockers that could impede the delivery process.
Assessments empower teams
At the orientation session, I realized that our colleagues who are designing the assessment process, are handing product teams an invaluable tool.
Why? It can be hard to mobilize and focus teams at the start of the design process — a phase we call ‘discovery’. Teams, program areas, individuals with deep subject-area expertise, all come to a new initiative with mental models about what success looks like, and legitimate ‘where do I fit’ questions. And, new pieces of information are continually filtering in, throughout this phase.
Digital First Assessments help cut through the fog of information overload, competing priorities and organizational chatter.
Each assessment form highlights upfront what a team will have accomplished at the end of each respective phase of the digital design process (discovery, alpha, beta and live). Not should have, will have. It’s an uplifting call to action and summation of our future state.
In the first phase called ‘Discovery’, here’s a snapshot of what we will have achieved:
- a clear understanding of the problems that the service will address
- a documented set of user needs
- a plan for what will be prototyped and tested in alpha
- a list of what resources will be required to support work in alpha
And we will have arrived there, by doing these things:
- conducted user research
- decided who the primary user groups will be
- learned about the people who will use the service
- asked users what they want in a service
- checked if there are existing or non-governmental services that meet user needs
- identified policies and other barriers that will make meeting user needs difficult
- documented the findings
These points are empowering — an action-oriented series of coaching touch points, that focus and guide the team toward product and service delivery excellence.
Through the assessment process, peers provide incremental coaching to product teams, helping refine the design of a product or service. This collaboration is fantastic because it encourages us all to stay focused on the prize — delivering products and services that meet user needs.
In our work sessions, our product team can confidently ask ourselves:
- Do all of our planned, near-term activities lead us down this learning path?
- Are there any barriers to accomplishing these tasks?
- Are we doing the right things to get us to where we need to be?
Eliminating blockers
A blocker is a barrier to service excellence, something that stands in the way of meeting the user need. At one of our early bi-weekly ‘Show and Tells’ (open forums, where our product team regularly showcases what we’ve learned or built during the design process to internal stakeholders), our team highlighted the “after Discovery Assessment” points (listed above), to add context to our Discovery efforts. As a Product Manager, sharing this guidance helps clarify a lot of ambiguity among stakeholders. Also, it makes this part of my job easier — I don’t have to rationalize or defend our focus or process.
The Show and Tell forum helps us get feedback and action blockers in real time, with the right people in the room, including public service senior executives, such as Assistant Deputy Ministers
By highlighting the assessments question set and goals at the Show and Tell, we facilitate a shared understanding of what we’re discovering, and what goals we’re driving toward.
Digital First Assessments align directly to the Digital Service Standard, and are connected to the playbooks, guides and toolkits, available online to help teams deliver excellent online services. The goal is to help teams succeed, and build products that are truly simpler, faster and better for people.
Digital First Assessments are your friend
Based on my first-hand experience, Digital Assessments are your friend. I hope that other teams come to appreciate this guidance because the people running assessments are an incredible resource and support for product and delivery managers.
In the spirit of continuous improvement, the Digital First Assessments team is iterating on the assessments process to ensure that it, too, meets user needs. If you have feedback to share, please get in touch with our team.
Drop in to open office hours
The Digital First Assessment team hosts open office hours every other week. Product teams can drop in for an orientation session on the assessment process, to ask questions and find out what training and help is available.
You can contact digitalassessments@ontario.ca to learn more about Digital First Assessments and open office hours.
