Post on 27-Jan-2015
description
Making Agile development and UX work at Citizens AdviceAdrian Hunt, Publishing Manager, Citizens Advice
First time agile
What I am going to talk about
Why Citizens Advice chose an agile development philosophy to develop their new CMS and inform their digital strategy
How user testing has informed that development
The lessons learnt – plus points and drawbacks
but first ...
This is a picture of the 1.8 million people who attended Barack Obama’s first inauguration as US President.
That’s roughly how many people walk through our doors each year
Twice as many ring us
Nine times as many use our websites
A well performing website but...
Citizens Advice’s advice website has seen traffic consistently increase over the past five years. Last year was its most successful ever with nearly 16 million unique visitors. However it is built on a creaking,15-year-old CMS.
Vince Cable saves the day
In March 2013, Citizens Advice was awarded additional funding to develop their online offering, some of which was allocated to a new CMS, a refresh of our website design and the development of a new digital strategy.
Scope of the project
Technical – Replacing a content management system and developing new functionality
Data – Migrating the content of six existing websites
Information architecture – All sites on a single domain with some sites merging
Design – Refreshing existing and introducing responsive design
Workflow – Changing the editorial model of intranet to include workflow
Commercial – Setting up a web subscription service for one of our websites
and ...
Agile project management
• Following disappointing experiences in previous ICT projects, we decided to develop the new CMS using Agile principles. This decision was made before any CMS had been chosen. It was an experiment and the first time it had been adopted at Citizens Advice.
• After a procurement exercise, the EPiServer CMS was chosen with Sigma as the developer. One of the particularly convincing arguments that Sigma had made was the emphasis they placed on user experience and continual user testing within the development cycle.
Why Agile: Key differences
Agile against traditional development
Pros Early visibility of developments
Changing priority of features easy
Changing order of releases easy
Testing done throughout
Cons Requires a lot of time
Almost dedicated input from business owners
Lots of testing needed
Our Agile approach
Story – item/feature to develop Backlog – prioritised list of items to develop
Sprint – 2 week mini development cycle taking top items from the backlog, developing and testing them before presenting them-
Showcase – Where developed stories are presented. They are then tested against the specification
Each story costs a certain number of points
Each sprint contains a max of 120 pts = velocity
Intention: early and continuous visibility of development
Agile – Sprint meetings
Week 1
SPM
Week 2“Sprint”
ShowcaseLook
AheadWeek 1
SPM
Week 2“Sprint”
ShowcaseLook
AheadWeek 1
SPM
Week 2“Sprint”
ShowcaseLook
AheadWeek 1
SPM
Week 2“Sprint”
ShowcaseLook
AheadWeek 1
SPM
Week 2“Sprint”
ShowcaseLook
AheadWeek 1
SPM
Week 2“Sprint”
ShowcaseLook
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SPM
Week 2“Sprint”
ShowcaseLook
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ShowcaseLook
Ahead
Release
Sprints
SPMLook
AheadShowcase
Week 1 Week 2
Intended velocity
July August September October November December January February March
BMIS CABlink Adviceguide
BMIS
CABlink
Corp
Adviceguide
Advisernet
AdvisernetCorp
User experience approach
At the outset of the project, we had the goal to test new ideas, designs and functionality with users and place each site in a beta version prior to rollout…
Feedback was gathered through a variety of techniques, including: Workshops and focus groups Interviews, surveys and questionnaires Natural environment observation User testing (remote and observed, guerrilla) Analytics Website feedback mechanisms
Where UX counted
Benchmarking of existing sites
Template design
Paper prototyping
Strategic goals
Internal stakeholder requirements
Key external stakeholder requirements
Accessibility reviews at each site launch
Beta testing of the internal sites, BMIS and CABlink
200 Citizens Advice super testers recruited
Two focus groups representing the public and power
Agile and UX in action
My sketch of a section start page with the different types of feature
Agile and UX in action (idea generation)
First draft of the design of the section start page in Photoshop
Agile and UX in action (design 1)
Agreed design of the section start page in Photoshop
Agile and UX in action (iteration of design)
Functionality specified and uploaded onto project tool, Trello
Agile and UX in action (specification)
Testing of functionality by Citizens Advice, comments and findings recorded on Trello
Agile and UX in action (staging)
Agile and UX in action (live)
The home page of one of our intranet sites, CABlink, which is built from interchangeable blocks developed for the start pages of other sites
Milestones: Where are we now
Sep 2013: Presentation to Annual Conference
Oct – Dec 2013: BMIS beta
Jan 2014: BMIS live
Feb – Mar 2014: CABlink beta
Apr 2014: CABlink live
Jun 2014: Last two development sprints planned
Early Sep 2014: AdviserNet launch planned-
Mid Sep 2014: Corporate and Adviceguide sites merged and new citizensadvice.org.uk launched
Autumn – Winter 2014: UX review of sites
Lessons: Agile
Exhausting – get the velocity right
Testing resource
Bugs – with complexity comes bugs
Specifications are still required
Tracking of progress essential
More stabilisation sprints
There is built-in redundancy
Co-location helpful, though not essential
Lessons: Project specific
Make sure you have real content in the CMS on which to develop
Know the technology – as the client you will be specifying and testing
Think design/templates and then develop functionality
More UX
Second staff full time
Was a shift-and-lift migration project suitable for agile development?
Successes
More client involvement in development
Don’t go too far wrong
Continuous redefinition / iteration
Constant reprioritisation of stories
Encourages you to test with users
You get better at it as the project progresses
Better product as an end result
The future
Agile is now being rolled out to other projects and areas of Citizens Advice
On the websites, we are adopting Agile and user needs wholesale as a
means of producing and reviewing content and tools
User experience is central to our future content strategy
Testing resource is recognised as an essential component to any
development
Thank you and questions
My name is Adrian Hunt.
I am Publishing Manager at Citizens Advice.
I can be contacted at:
adrian.hunt@citizensadvice.org.uk or
adrhunt@googlemail.com