Transforming Government Content

Padma Gillen, Scroll LLP

@ScrollUK

Hello!

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Overview

1. A story

2. Organising content teams

3. Agile

1. Kanban and scrum

2. The sprint

4. Workflow

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A story about… 1The Smarter Guidance project

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Smarter Guidance was about increasing the quality

and reducing the quantity of Defra guidance.

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We started with 120,000 pages.

We’ve reduced that by 80%. So far.

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We achieved this by designing content around user needs.

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As a…

I want to…

So I can…

User stories

UK passport holder

renew my passport

leave the country

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We required acceptance criteria and source content

before starting work on an item.

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Workflow

For a quality product, every stage is important:

• Check we have what we need

• Draft

• 2i

• Fact check

• Fact check amends

• 2i

• Final approval

• Published

@ScrollUK

What does quality mean?

It’s quality content if it meets your needs as a user. That means:

• you can find it

• you can understand it

• it’s factually accurate

• it’s complete

• it’s consistent with the rest of the site

• you can act on it

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For a while, neither quality nor pace was good enough.

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So, we iterated.

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We tweaked the 2i process, started crits and set up fire teams.

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We had a 2i meeting every week at first to ensure consistency and as a forum for

questions.

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We had a content design masterclass every week to raise the standard of

everyone in the team.

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My goal was that everyone on the team would eventually be 2i.

Ideally, 2i should be peer review.

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We had to figure out how to approach highly technical content in plain English.

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We found that 2i for specialist content is pretty much the same as 2i for

mainstream.

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Things we’re looking for in 2i

• Is it in proposition? • Does it work with what’s already on the site (or

planned)? • Does the structure make sense from a user

perspective? • Does the analytics and other data back up the user

need, use of language and approach? • Is it in plain English? • Is it in style? • Is the tone of voice right? • Did the content designer take account of all fact

check comments - or give clear reasons why not?

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2i is a training opportunity - give clear, constructive

feedback that the content designer can learn from.

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If you pull all that together for your team, you’ll have the skills

and process required to produce quality content.

Consistently.

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The quantity of work, resistance from SMEs, and the firm deadline meant we

sometimes had to compromise on quality.

No one loved that.

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We published MVP and started a content debt spreadsheet so we can

go back and iterate.

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We hit the target. Then we organised things to make it

sustainable.

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Organising content teams2

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Organise for maximum quality.

Design speed into the process.

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Options

1. Central team

2. Distributed team

3. Hub and spoke

4. Matrix

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Central team

Pros

1. Easy to manage

2. Team communicates easily

3. Spot issues quickly

4. Strong team identity

5. Learns quickly

Cons

1. Doesn’t scale well

2. Can be seen as authoritarian

3. Can be remote from the user

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Distributed team

Pros

1. Flexible

2. Closer to users

Cons

1. Communication

2. Creating a culture

3. Sharing learning across team

4. Spotting issues before they become big problems

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Hub and spoke

Pros

1. It scales

2. You can still: - create a culture- share learning- spot issues (as long as you have the right structure and governance in place)

Cons

1. Success depends on how you organise it

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Matrix

Pros

1. Designed for large scale

2. Allows communities of practice

3. Breaks down silos and can build content design awareness across the organisation

Cons

1. You can end up being responsible for things you have no control over

2. Can lead to confusion and resentment

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We went with hub and spoke.

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For many situations though, matrix has real potential.

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For hub and spoke to work, you need a clear hierarchy.

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Organise larger teams into several ‘fire teams’.

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Workflow3

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From request to icebox

Content designers ask:

• is there a user need?

• how do you know it's a user need? (any data?)

• is it in proposition?

• is it already met on GOV.UK?

• is it already met elsewhere?

• are there clear acceptance criteria?

• is there clear source material to work from? (or an SME who can explain?)

OK, we'll do something…

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From backlog to done

Ideally this:

• Backlog

• Draft

• 2i

• Fact check

• Fact check amends

• 2i

• Published

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From backlog to done

But could be more like this:

• Backlog

• Draft

• 2i

• Amends

• 2i

• Fact check

• Fact check amends

• Breathe!

• 2i

• Amends

• 2i

• 2nd factcheck

• 2nd factcheck amends

• 2i

• Amends

• 2i

• Published!

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Agile4

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Source: GDS Service Design Manual

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How to do it

1. Get a rough idea. (Discovery)

2. Build a minimal version and try it out. (Alpha)

3. Mess around with it lots based on user feedback and behaviour. (Still alpha)

4. Get it roughly right based on what you’ve learned. (Beta)

5. Still listen to feedback and tweak as necessary (Still beta)

6. When you’re happy it’s all working well, consider it ‘finished’. (Live)

7. (But keep iterating.)

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Source: http://agilemanifesto.org/

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Agile works well for digital because things change lots

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@ScrollUK@ScrollUK

Kanban and Scrum3.1

Different ways to run agile projects

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Kanban

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Scrum

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Scrum divides work into sprints.

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The team agrees to deliver a certain amount of work

each sprint.

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Scrum rituals

Sprint planning

Daily stand-up

Show and tell

Retrospective

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Content team

Each scrum team needs:

• product owner

• scrum master

• developers

This translates as:

• content lead

• content delivery manager

• content designers

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The sprint3.2

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Sprint planning

1. Look at the top tickets (tasks) in the icebox (should be highest priority).

2. Size the items (S, M, L, XL or 1,2,3,5,8).

3. See what’s not been completed from last sprint.

4. Look at the velocity of the team (how much you can realistically get through).

5. Put enough stuff from the icebox into the backlog for a sprint.

6. Assign them to content designers, or let content designers pick items when ready.

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Daily stand-up

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Or ‘Slack-up’

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Show and tell

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(And do regular crits too.)

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Retrospective

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Big retrospective

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Burndown chart

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Thank you!

Scroll provides training in digital content skills through the Digital Content Academy.

Find out more at:

www.digitalcontent.academy www.scroll.co.uk

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