Digital and Agile Specialist

Category: Agile

  • Measuring cost vs. measuring value?

    Discussing the differences between Product Management in the Private and Public sector. There has always been a perceived difference in how Product Managers in the public and private sector work, what their priorities are and their key focuses. Historically at its most simplistic the view has been that within the Public sector the Product Manager…

  • When is Digital not Digital?

    When it’s not about user needs or human centric design, but instead about fixing technological infrastructure. When it’s not about transforming the service but keeping the lights on systems. When it’s not about asking “why?”, because you already know the solution you want. As Tom Loosemore said, Digital is applying the culture, practices, processes &…

  • Building a case based on assumptions

    Why you shouldn’t start with the business case. I’ve been working within Digital transformation for almost ten years now, working on some of the largest projects and programmes within the public sector. From front line services to backend systems, from simple forms to complex benefit processing applications. One thing that has been a feature of every…

  • Delivering Digital Government 2019

    This week Claire Harrison (Head of Architecture from CQC) and I had the opportunity to attend the Delivering Digital Goverment event run by Worth Systems in The Hague. The event was focused on how digital has transformed governments across the world, sharing best practices and lessons learned. With speakers from the founding of GDS, like…

  • Service Standards for the whole service

    How the service standards have evolved over time…. Gov.uk has recently published the new Service Standards for government and public sector agencies to use when developing public facing transactional services. I’ve previously blogged about why the Service Standards are important in helping us develop services that meet user needs, as such I’ve been following their…

  • Scrum Master or Delivery Manager – what’s in a name?

    Are the roles of Scrum Master and Delivery manager the same? Continuing on my recent musings on the different roles within Agile multidisciplinary teams, today’s blog focuses on the role of the Delivery Manager, or the Scrum Master, and whether these roles are really the same thing. This is a conversation that came up a…

  • Producing Code or Fixing Problems?

    The role of Developers in user centric design. I’ve been working with Developers of different flavours for almost a decade now, and in that time I’ve worked with some amazing Devs, and some frustrating ones; the same as any role it depends on the person. I’ve also encountered a lot of stereotypes about Developers, primarily…

  • What is the value in a Head of Product?

    Our numbers are growing, but what is the role, and what value does it add? When I first took up the role of ‘Head of Product Management’ back in October 2016, I was one of the first in Government to have the title, and within a few months there was a very small band of…

  • What is the role of Business Analysts within agile?

    Analysisng the role of the Business Analyst. When we were looking at the Digital, Data and Technology (DDaT) roles and capabilities back in 2016, one of the roles we really struggled with was the role of the Business Analyst (BA). Not because we didn’t agree that it was a role (because we absolutely did) but…

  • Round and round we go.

    In other words Agile isn’t linear so stop making it look like it is. Most people within the public sector who work in Digital transformation have seen the GDS version of the Alpha lifecycle: Which aims to demonstrate that developing services starts with user needs, and that projects will move from Discovery to Live, with…