Fellowship Digital Services: Beta Phase Sprint Notes 8

In this Sprint, we made progress on researching the single sign-on (SSO) requirements and delivered internal Show & Tell for stakeholders and Fellows.

A reminder of the project's focus: this beta project is focused on enhancing existing and implementing a new technology at the RSA called Circle, to help improve how Fellows engage and contribute to the RSA work and collaborate with other Fellows.

For further detail see Beta Phase Sprint Notes 7

What happened in Sprint 8

The goals we set out for Sprint 8 were to:

• Design the end-to-end user journey, including the content
• Develop and share technical plans for the service build, including initial ideas regarding the approach to single sign-on
• Progress testing and engagement plans, ensuring that participation is representative.

During this sprint, we:

• progressed user end-to-end journey designs and delivered a workshop to collaboratively design the service, focusing on RSA events
• made progress on researching the single sign-on (SSO) requirements and options
• refined the beta testing plan and advanced the recruitment of participants for the testing
• started to design the support process for RSA
• started to map out RSA teams involved in the service and planning how to engage them in the service testing and roll out moving forward
• delivered internal Show & Tell for the RSA stakeholders and the Show & Ask for RSA Fellows

Designing the end-to-end journey

A couple of sprints ago, we identified which parts of the end-to-end user journey to
focus on first, and began designing the interaction and content for these parts of the service.

During Sprint 8, we made progress on journey designs based on the feedback
received from RSA stakeholders. We have also been incorporating input and feedback from the Technical Architect in the designs.

We have now finished the design of the user support journey, user profiles and event journey among other designs.

Single sign on (SSO)

The SSO option could potentially integrate Circle and other technology solutions used by the RSA to allow the user to log in only once, rather than having to log individually to each platform. Based on the feedback received from Fellows so far, this would be a very useful feature.

During Sprint 8, we have been undertaking further research into the requirements
and options for SSO, including speaking to potential providers.

The team had a catch up on SSO to refine requirements. These requirements will be used to create a matrix for options analysis,helping us to look beyond the initial cost analysis to understand the additional value each option could provide for the service.

Beta testing plan

Over the past few sprints, we have been progressing our plans for testing the service with users. This is to ensure the new service provides Fellows and other service users a positive experience, meets the service vision and beta goal, and is accessible, reliable and secure.

During Sprint 8, we continued to iterate the beta testing plan which was drafted in
the previous sprint. This plan outlines different groups of users that we suggest take part in the testing to ensure diversity and consider the needs of as many different user groups as possible. We have detailed the format, timeline and structure of how we could deliver three types of testing with the Fellows - unmoderated, activity led, and functional testing.

In parallel, we have been making progress with recruiting Fellows to take part in the beta testing and discussing options to involve key RSA team members who will interact with the service in the testing. We have already had a good response from Fellows offering to participate in forthcoming testing.

Show & Tell and Show & Ask sessions

In Sprint 8, we delivered a Show & Ask session with Fellows and our first informal
Show & Tell session with stakeholders.

The Show & Ask session with Fellows helped us collect very valuable feedback from Fellows through an interactive exercise. We will take this feedback on board across different areas of service. We experienced challenges with delivering the session as the team and Fellows could not get into the session due to the invite being managed from the account of a team member that was not attending the session and hence could not let the participants in. As this has happened repeatedly, the Fellows fed back on this poor experience, following which the team escalated the issue and will seek to avoid it repeating in the next session.

The Show & Tell session is a short 30 minute session taking place bi-weekly, giving the stakeholders to learn about the service, get updates on the progress we make and ask us any questions. We planned to use the first session to get feedback on recent designs.  Once the participants were confirmed, we pivoted the plan and delivered the demo of the service and a project presentation for those who have not interacted with the service.

While this was useful to those who were new to the service, the teams that are more involved in the service development fed back the session needs a different approach to add value. Following this feedback, we decided to map out different teams and how to engage them and change the session’s focus for the next session.

Next steps

We have 2 sprints left before we start rolling the service out. The core focus for the upcoming sprints is to build the MVP version of the beta service and test it with users to ensure their needs are reflected.

Our Sprint 9 goals include:

• finishing the design and approval of the beta testing plan
• starting to contact participants
• scheduling upcoming testing sessions
• completing the user journey designs and handing them over to Netcel
• finalising the SSO technical research

During the next two weeks (Sprint 9), we'll also focus on:

• Proceeding with mapping out RSA teams involved in the service and planning their involvement in the service testing and roll out
• Continuing the unmoderated testing of Circle with more focus on Fellows
• Delivering our 2nd informal bi-weekly Show and Tell with RSA and partner stakeholders
• Delivering content workshop to/and finalise the user journey design with RSA stakeholders
• Continuing to improve our ways of working together, including considering how we could better plan our sprints and manage workflow on the Asana board.