Reusability: More Than Just Tech —Enterprise Design Thinking for Government Agencies
(In terms of reusability, tech goes way beyond just reusable modules and code bases. GovTech UX Designers, Delivery Managers and Software Engineers in GovTech are all policy specialists in their own right, and are able to translate their product and process experience in one policy sector to another.
I had the good privilege to be involved in my team’s recent Enterprise Thinking Workshop, a testament to how we invest heavily in influencing agencies in business process re-engineering and design thinking. After all, if we want to go fast, we code alone — but if we are to go far, we will need to work hand-in-hand with our government partners. This article is a quick summary of their work — I write, at high-level, to remind myself of the important principles we had wanted our agency partners to take away.
Most importantly, this is a belated thank-you post, so loud shoutout to the OurSG Grants Portal (OSG) team — with their experience in building a one-stop shopfront for all of Singapore’s Community & Social grant schemes, the team has taken time out to share their experience and chart the way forward for yet another grant sector in Singapore.
Check the OSG team’s product out here — https://oursggrants.gov.sg/)
Very often, what is reusable in the tech sector is not just tech alone, but know-how, relationships and experience. When it comes to supporting government policies under our belt, GovTech has had experience with building government grant portals for three grant sectors thus far (i.e. Business, Community & Social grant sectors).
So when the National Research Foundation (NRF) approached us on how to re-imagine grant management processes for the Research, Innovation & Enterprise (RIE) sector in Singapore, we knew it would be a waste to not tap on such a rich reservoir of technical and business know-how accumulated by the OurSG Grants Portal (OSG) team.
On 19 January 2023, the OSG team kickstarted the first in a series of discovery workshops for the RIE sector. Here at GovTech, we bring government agencies through an initial process of Enterprise Design Thinking (EDT) before we embark on any business process re-engineering or product development with them. EDT is an entire design philosophy, and the team did what they could to bring the RIE sector through three key tenets in a short one-day workshop.
Hopes & Fears
Recognising that any undertaking of a new product has tension and uncertainty, the OSG Team felt that it was important to put everything on the table in the open right from the start. In this section, the team gave each of the RIE stakeholders time to voice out and discuss what was most important to them as the project moves forward.
Our hope was to have each of the sector leads see their respective ambitions and concerns echoed by other team members, so as to create both a sense of camaraderie and group spirit and also a focused urgency towards mitigating these risks.
An Obsession with User Outcomes
At the heart of it all, EDT is a way of bringing about innovation and brand differentiation, with a focus on creating experiences that delight customers.
Naturally, one of the key principles is an obsession with user outcomes, in all senses of the phrase and at all levels possible. When we shift our thinking about what product features to develop to one about what kind of user outcomes we want, we set ourselves up for imagining different ways of product development and delivery.
In this context, the team invited the RIE sector to reframe their business question — rather than asking “how can we design a better grants portal”, we wanted to generate more customer value by asking “how can we design a better way to interact with grant applicants to determine their needs”. In fact, fixating our needs on a “grants portal” necessarily means we develop another grants portal with a more extensive set of features, which may not be what users need.
At the end of the day, breakthroughs stem from a well-defined problem and a deep understanding of who our users are. If we think about the user experience, we’re far more likely to end up with a better solution, a differentiating experience and a delighted user.
Restless Reinvention
Here’s where it gets a little bit more nuanced — on one hand, product teams should never feel like the deed is done:
- There’s always a better solution, if only we had more time to speak to more users!
- If only we had a better technology, we could create new features!
Yet in practice, product teams need to commit to an idea, or they risk missing that sweet window where their users are actually looking for something. In fact, you can only reap value if you do commit to an idea!
What then? It is to recognise that from the perspective of our users, no solution is ever perfect. In line with the Agile philosophy, we develop a bias towards action, keeping in mind that every working iteration is to be taken as a prototype.
And that is restless reinvention, where we invest in rapid prototyping to validate ideas quickly and shortening the push-to-market cycle, so that we can rapidly obtain user feedback and course-correct.
Keeping Our Eyes on the Hills
As with any product, vision-casting is important. In EDT, hills are an elegant way to write your product vision. A hill is a statement that defines the direction for a product as an ideal end state for your users, without containing the solution. So broadly, a hill tells you where to go, but not how to get there, and this empowers teams to explore innovative ideas without losing sight of their product goal.
And in some sense, that is also Agile — focusing on the outcomes for delivery, rather than fixating our eyes on features that may be simply output in nature.
Sounds broad? No worries — there is a clear syntax to a hill statement. A hill statement focuses on three key elements:
- WHO: Who are the users?
- WHAT: What’s the need they’re trying to meet?
- WOW: How will you measure your success?
And what better way to prioritise user end-states than a value-feasibility contour matrix? While the OSG Team landed on this particular prioritisation framework, the larger picture is that prioritisation reveals the opportunity cost associated with each product feature, which helps us maximise the value brought to market in a shorter time.
A rather poor attempt to capture the essence of what the OSG Team has painstakingly put together for the RIE sector, but it suffices to keep me aligned with my team.
Glad to be working with the RIE Sector Leads and the OSG Team on this new product journey:
