On the GOV.UK government team we're switching to two-week sprints as of tomorrow, Wednesday 3 July.
Sprinting for a week at a time made sense while we were in the thick of transitioning the 24 departments. (In reality, we weren't sprinting so much as running a marathon: building and iterating features across the whole of the product and prioritising as we went along).
Now that we're fully operational, we want to revert to fortnightly sprints and properly plan what we want to get done, and how we will measure improvement, in each fortnight. It should mean we can focus on an area of the product for longer, reduce some of the inefficiency from context-switching and the regular meetings that are needed per sprint, and help us to take a more holistic look at a problem rather than chipping away incrementally. That's the theory: we'll see how it goes.
The theme for the next two weeks (from Wednesday 3 July to Tuesday 16 July) will be improving publications and consultations. You can see the stories here. Publications are the most visited format in the government section of the site, and there's a lot we can do to improve the experience for both end users and publishers. Consultations are a hot topic, and likewise there are some obvious improvements we've been waiting to make.
The transition tool work will now be taken forward by a new, dedicated team, forming part of the Agency and ALB project. That team is being brought together as of today and will be product managed by Clare Moss.
5 comments
Comment by Amy Khan posted on
Can I come in and talk to you about publications? Am v interested in how this evolves.
Comment by Neil Williams posted on
Yes, happy to do that if you're popping by the office; but it might be better for other folks to have that discussion here in public. Have you read the user stories?
Comment by John Ploughman posted on
Looking forward to seeing these stories delivered.
Particularly interested to find out more about how detailed guides will be migrated into HTML publications, and whether that's going to be a manual or automatic process.
Comment by Henny Fordham posted on
Hi, the DVLA handbook example also has a pdf version - is this a temporary solution - ie is the plan to dispense with pdfs eventually?
Also in the html I can't see a print tab - it would be useful to be able to print it in the same way as the html guides or pdfs.
Comment by Neil Williams posted on
Hi Henry
Great questions. We do indeed plan to do both of these things.
The user stories are here if you want to keep tabs on our progress:
https://www.pivotaltracker.com/story/show/55306226
https://www.pivotaltracker.com/story/show/48461663
Bear with us, lots to do, but it will come as soon as we can squeeze it in.
Thanks
Neil