Goal 1: begin to recruit users and carry out user research
We began reaching out to our desired users to invite them to participate in research sessions for our first phase of research. During this sprint we held 5 research sessions.
We conducted research with participants from the Operational Excellence and Service delivery teams in the Funding service to add to our understanding of team roles, knowledge needs and the drivers of funding complexity.
To make sure we are not taking up too much of our Operational Excellence colleagues time with requests for research from the various strands of work, we’re running our research sessions with them jointly with another team. The other team are investigating the usability of the Funding data service and Calculate funding service products.
We also conducted research with policy colleagues who design funding to understand their experiences.
This phase of research will continue in sprint 3.
Goal 2: begin factfinding with subject matter experts
One of the methods we are using to investigate our questions, assumptions and gaps is factfinding conversations with key subject matter experts.
During this sprint we met with subject matter experts from the Grants Centre of Excellence and Funding policy implementation teams to understand their roles in the design and operationalisation of grants, and to provide answers to our questions, assumptions and gaps. We will continue to do more factfinding in sprint 3.
Goal 3: continue mapping the guidance and documentation
Our initial discussions with subject matter experts have allowed us to address several gaps in the content audit and answer some of our key questions. In sprint 3, we’ll continue to map guidance and documentation by engaging in more factfinding conversations and gathering insights from user research.
Goal 4: create our delivery plan
In the previous sprint, we refined our scope, questions, assumptions and gaps and agreed what method we would use to investigate them.
At the start of this sprint, we created a delivery plan which mapped when we would complete the necessary tasks over the period of the alpha.