Following his article about the need for the public sector to look beyond siloed contracts, Rich Major, Client Partner at Made Tech, considers how a shared sense of direction can help government organisations make better delivery decisions, manage competing priorities and keep their transformation programmes on track.
One of the challenges with digital transformation is making sure that, once delivery is underway, everybody remains focused on what the organisation is actually trying to achieve.
I keep coming back to the importance of having a north star. I’m not particularly attached to the term, but I think it’s important to have a clearly defined goal that everybody understands and can align to. It gives people something to come back to when priorities change or difficult decisions need to be made.
Have delivery teams become a production line of features?
Take the balance between developing new features, improving existing functionality and managing technical debt. Customers understandably want to demonstrate progress, and a new feature is something tangible they can show people. The technical work underneath it is much harder to demonstrate, even though neglecting it can leave the organisation with a considerably more expensive and complicated service to support.
We see these discussions in our work with the Met Office. How much capacity should go towards delivering something new, how much towards improving what already exists, and what needs to happen now to prepare for what’s coming in six or nine months?
There’s also the question of where digital transformation priorities lie more broadly. From my own experience as a citizen, I’m struck by how variable the digital experience can be. One government service might be incredibly straightforward to use, while another still involves filling in a paper form and sending it off. Sometimes it’s a remarkably basic form, too.
Is government spending too much time making services that have already been transformed even better, while others haven’t really started that journey?
Delivery teams can get so involved in producing the next thing that they don’t always have the opportunity to consider those wider questions. At Made Tech, part of our job is to make sure that happens, both when we’re initially understanding the customer’s objectives and periodically throughout delivery.
That means checking where capacity is being spent and whether we’re giving enough attention to the things that will enable the service to develop in the future, rather than simply delivering another feature.
Alignment doesn’t mean everybody agreeing
None of this works particularly well if everybody involved has a different understanding of what they’re trying to achieve.
I don’t think that necessarily means you need somebody at board level directing everything. Often you can get the alignment you need at programme or business unit level, provided the people involved have enough authority to make decisions when problems arise.
Nor should alignment mean consensus on absolutely everything. A technical lead will sometimes disagree with a product manager, and different departments will have different perspectives. That’s healthy, provided everybody understands the wider objective and those disagreements help you reach a better decision.
The difficulty comes when departmental or individual objectives start taking precedence. You can have everybody agreeing on the direction within one part of an organisation without that agreement extending across the rest of it.
There’s also a danger that the measures used to demonstrate success start driving behaviour that doesn’t support the wider objective. Some things are relatively easy to measure, such as how many people successfully complete an application, but success doesn’t always have to be defined through KPIs.
This is where the depth of the relationship we build with our customers becomes particularly important. We spend time understanding their environment and work closely enough with them that we’re sharing their challenges, rather than simply delivering something and handing it over. At the same time, we need to retain enough perspective to challenge decisions when something isn’t quite right.
I’ve always felt that you see the real strength of a customer relationship when things aren’t going particularly well. Can you have those difficult conversations and work through the problems together? Does that honesty extend through both organisations?
We value customer satisfaction surveys, but you shouldn’t get a survey result that surprises you. You should already have had the conversations, understood what’s happening and worked together to address it.
That strength of relationship makes it much easier to keep everybody focused on what the organisation is trying to achieve, rather than allowing individual projects and departmental priorities to dictate the direction of the whole programme.
About the Author
Rich Major
Client Partner
