Weeknotes April 30th 2021
In the spirit of transparency and candour, Kevin and Jill have decided to start publishing weeknotes reflecting on the what and why for their team.
Kevin’s notes:
bcparks.ca
The intention of the Service Transformation Branch is cross-ministerial surge capacity; that is, helping with strategy and execution for projects, emphasizing modern ways of working, designing, and building. In my first 5 weeks on the job I’ve been embedded with the team rebuilding bcparks.ca, moving from a grief-inducing legacy system built on static html to a modern, headless CMS driven by APIs.
I’ve been working on adding user-centered design capacity to our efforts, as we begin a pivot from replatform to redesign. This week I leaned heavily into:
- Recruitment: enlisting a diverse public userbase for foundational research, UX activities, and prototype testing. We’re looking to establish a much deeper understanding of user wants and needs for the site; what are the key tasks to be completed, and why? Big thanks to Becs Hoskins (Manager, Community Engagement and Education) for connecting me with Parks’ vast and dynamic network. There’s a huge appetite to be part of a co-creative process improving our services, and I’m excited to structuralize the practice. It’s worth noting: quality recruitment is a lot of work. It’s about building relationships with the partner organizations who can connect you with their members/clients/etc. But this is how you unlock a truly qualitative understanding of your users — and there’s no replacement when designing good services.
- Analytics: beefing up the analytic data captured by bcparks.ca through user flows, heatmaps, and audit automation for pages/content vis-a-vis site traffic. We work with Dan Pollock and his analytic team out of GDX, and they’re awesome.
- Roadmapping: we held a product roadmapping workshop this week to realign the product team around priorities, deliverables, and capacity from now through September (end of the vendor contract). Big shoutouts to Nick Mailhot (delivery manager), Rob Fiddler (product owner), and Jesus Hernandez Tapia (scrum guru) for all the prep work and facilitation. I came out of the exercise feeling much more aware and focused on our key priorities, and what it’s going to take to deliver.
- PIA (privacy impact assessment): Nick and I are also working through the project PIA, which we’ve broken into two components, tech and design. The service design PIA will then become a blanket for all public-facing research and design activities at BC Parks moving forward — a big win for standardization and repeatable process. Thanks to Kyle Eggleston at the IITD for the help on this thus far!
Finally, I also had my first full week enjoying a standing desk in the home office. You can file this upgrade under: gamechanger.
Jill’s notes:
Today marks the end of week 12 diving deep into the needs and complexity of the ministry. With our fiscal year-end (March) in the wind, it truly has been a whirlwind of learning new context, surfacing opportunities, and untangling roles and responsibilities. It seems like every email turns up a new public-facing, high-value opportunity for service transformation. It can be overwhelming.
Just start
- Hillary Hartley, Chief Digital Officer Government of Ontario
As smartly stated above we have to start, and bcparks.ca is a great place to learn how we can add value. This week I turned my mind to framing out the emerging strategy and design principles that will form the foundation of our work beyond a single business area. A few key items this week:
- Building on success: I worked closely this week with my colleagues in the Climate Action Secretariat to frame out what a successful multi-team agile program could look like. Drawing on my experience setting up the Mines Digital Service we sketched out the procurement, recruitment, funding, and organizational structure.
- Beyond bcparks.ca: BC Parks has a number of digital products and services owned by different leaders across the organization. I continued to document and coordinate conversations on the next steps for many of these initiatives. My goal: a coordinated multi-product roadmap by the fall that outlines the work required, the people involved, and the opportunities emerging.
- Governance: this topic comes up A LOT and is even a swear word to some. My goal this week was to hear the successes and failures in this space from my cross-ministry executive network. The discussions were broad, ranging from implementing informal coffee klastch sessions to establishing a formal committee. Through it all, a simple approach emerged. It must be user-driven, with a shared purpose we can align on (my gut says this is around agile teams, the product vs project divide, and digital funding and operating models).
Gratitude nod
- Kevin Ehman: as you can see above, he’s been busy! I couldn’t be happier with how complimentary our skills are, how much we’ve already grown together and how excited I am to have him back driving change from inside the public service. Thanks, Lena Stachiw for the connection!
- Sam Terani: in a short time Sam has managed to build a network of peers and colleagues across the ministry who are passionate about internal communications. He’s done it collaboratively and with skill beyond his years, kudos Sam!
- BC Parks team and leadership (including newly minted rumon carter), who have graciously jumped into this often overwhelming, sometimes scary adventure with us.
Personally, I added a new parcel to the family bringing home our second pup Buoy. He likes short walks, chewing my toes, and declining meeting invites.
