As the DNA Labs begin our second year, we are evolving both our Service Offerings and the way we work – because we believe how we deliver is as important as what we deliver.
To complement our new Service Offerings, we have added some rigour around how we engage with our agency partners to ensure the right roles and responsibilities are in place when each project starts in our Labs.
This ensures that the projects are set up for success, not just in the DNA phase of the service delivery but through to first, second, third release and beyond.
This added structure also ensures that there is appropriate stakeholder engagement when the project starts within the Labs, that communications and change management are aligned for appropriate points in the project, and that a long-standing product team will maintain ownership after the DNA Labs team steps back.
So, what does our new Operating Model look like?
If you’ve worked with the DNA Labs in the past, you’ll see the familiar M-D-A-B-S (Mobilise – Discovery – Alpha – Beta – Scale) approach we’ve been using for the past year. What we’ve added are broader stages (Engage, Initiate, Deliver, Enable) that each DNA Labs engagement will go through.
Why are we doing this?
In our first year of existence, we often played a rescue role for projects that were handed to us in an urgent ‘just get it done’ mode. We often didn’t have time to adequately engage with our stakeholders to ensure they understood how we work, which created a bit of confusion when it was time to step back and look for product ownership or agile leadership.
By fully engaging up-front and setting a clear understanding of how we work, we expect the ongoing engagement to run more smoothly, with blockers addressed more quickly and the ongoing support in place to ensure long-term success.
How is this different?
We recognise that the skills required to deliver an awesome digital product are different to the skills government departments typically have on staff. Augmenting teams with User Research, Service Design, Product Design, and modern development skills has always been our bread and butter.
We also recognise that a delivery team in government means being a small cog in a big machine, so the stakeholder engagement and mobilisation work required to set up that delivery team for success is necessary.
Additionally, ensuring our Labs delivery teams can transition back to Agency teams before we start ensures that our Lean Startup approach (delivering small changes frequently and iterating the product based on actual usage analytics) can continue.
We’re confident this new model will create more clarity for the teams who work with us.
If you’d like to get involved with the DNA Labs or if you want to know more about our Service Offerings, please contact us at: digital@customerservice.nsw.gov.au.