Digital Strategy Design — sprint note 1

By dxw, Strategy Design group lead, Definition programme

There are 4 charities in DXW’s cohort and we’re focussed on designing digital strategies.

Getting started

We’re working in sprints - two weekly phases of work that start with planning and end in reflection. Sprints help us deliver work in a fluid and iterative way and keep track of what we’re doing. We completed sprint 1 of 5 at the beginning of the week.

We kicked off the project with an inception workshop. At dxw we often start projects with an inception. Inception is when you bring together the project stakeholders, with the purpose of identifying what you’re working towards, identify goals and start to form a plan. It’s an opportunity to make sure we all start with the same information and understanding.

In our inception we started by sharing hopes and fears for the project. We identified what we’re seeking to change, explored what we mean by certain terms such as engagement, and identified where the charities are on their digital transformation journey. We started to form a project roadmap for each charity. Roadmap is the term we use to describe a plan that is focussed around a shared goal. We identified shared activities and outcomes for the project.

Working in the open

In our kick-off meeting prior to inception we agreed the tools we’ll be using during the project and picked Slack as our main communication tool, accompanied by a regular project stand-up. We also have a living deck, which is a place to capture what we’re doing as we progress.

We had a conversation with our Editor at dxw to discuss our approach to publishing week notes. We decided on sprint notes, of which this is the first and the charities will follow for future sprints. We thought about the audience of the sprint notes and where the best place to publish them was. We decided here!

We agreed it was important to share what we’re learning in the sprint note, not just what we’re doing. We decided to write a case study in collaboration at the end of the project. This is something we’ll publish on the dxw blog too.

Sprint one

The first sprint focussed on set-up and planning, and the main aims of the sprint were to: agree what each charity is working towards and learn how to form a research plan.

We took the project roadmaps we began forming in inception, reviewed and refined these. After looking at these it became clear that they were very broad. As a first step, it was possible to identify a high-level goal for each charity to reflect what they want to achieve from the project. This is our starting point, and we may come back to the roadmaps later in the project, if they are a useful output for the charities to take forward to guide the work they go on to do.

A few initial learnings

• what is needed in terms of a strategy can be defined in different ways. We suggest this isn’t a bad thing, as a strategy can be applied at different levels
• research is something people see happening at the start of a project. We suggest it happens throughout a project and it evolves as you progress
• understanding what to deliver can be hard. We suggest to start with the needs of people in receipt of what you’re delivering to guide what you do

Things that have been hard

• how do we learn from one another when we’re at different stages and seeking to achieve different things? We’ve decided to follow the same process as much as we can - but not seeking the same outcomes from it
• being available at the same time isn’t always possible. We’ve decided to change our daily stand-up, to less regular but longer catch-ups

Learnings from one of our charities

• what went well: “we’ve been able to set out clearly our expectations from this project and ourselves, which has allowed the project to get off to a good start”
• what was hard: “planning our time and the logistics of this project for the next sprint - as a small organisation with research that needs to involve our wider team, it has been tricky to make sure we can get the most out of this project within our limited capacity”
• what we want to learn next: “as we move into research, I’d like to learn how we can most effectively analyse our research findings to construct our strategy”

Sprint two

We’ve started sprint 2. The focus of this sprint is to understand who we’re doing the work for, and what we currently do for these people. We’ve decided to prioritise our activities for this sprint as we complete them. The first prioritised activity is to create a research plan. Some of the charities would like to undertake primary research whereas some would like to use their existing research. The research we do in this sprint will be helpful to direct what we do in the later sprints.

We’re also undertaking 3 team sessions this sprint, focussed on:

• understanding the people we’re doing the work for
• understanding the things we currently do/the services we deliver
• identify where there is opportunity for change and improve what we do

Our first project show and tell is on 16 March. Please come along!