The Jury is In: A case study of an Agile, UX-driven project in a traditional government setting

An informative, entertaining and practical case study.

We designed a Jury Management System, using an Agile methodology. It included a staff application, a mobile-first public interface, paper-based forms and documentation, SMS and email messaging, branding, and an IVR.

We had a traditional organisation with a desire to shift to improve its service. The key stakeholders were very supportive of endorsing a fresh (and proven) approach.

We’ll only touch on the techniques we used (typical user-centred activities of research, prototyping and rapid iterative testing).

More interesting is understanding which strategies and tactics that proved useful – and which didn’t.

The need for executive support

Executive support is a two-way thing; the project needed to continually reinforce the mantra of ‘business-owned, user-centred, design-led’, explaining what that meant, showing how embracing it could deliver business value, and presenting tangible results and outcomes throughout the development process.

Cultural challenges

To an extent, project success was predicated on the organisation changing its culture. A single project is unlikely to change an entire culture, but it can be a catalyst.

The role of the IT department

IT departments generally are struggling to remain relevant in the face of extremely rapid change.

Lean, agile approaches can come up hard against established ways of delivering

Stakeholder overhead

We incurred a massive overhead incurred through constant engagement with stakeholders – well beyond simple user research – to sell and re-sell the user-centred message.

The team

We were lucky to be able to assemble a great collegial team, with world-class technical expertise and mutual respect, and with UX firmly at its core.

A post-implementation review

While we look back with pride on the achievement – a 2-year project that delivered a well-regarded service on time and on budget – we also reflect on what we could have done better.

Presentation

Sketchnotes

sketchnotes for the presentation
sketchnotes for the presentation