Goal 1: create process maps that group funding streams by age group and verify with stakeholders
We held multiple process map walkthroughs to validate the differences and commonalities in the grant onboarding journey. We found that the data source, tooling and payment type differ based on the provider type. We analysed pre-16 and adult funding streams based on the feedback from the stakeholders.
Next steps:
- add the research output to the process map
- validate the 16-19 process map
- extract process pain points and document
Goal 2: identify and prioritise opportunities
We wanted to write down opportunities we have collectively identified so far.
We used an existing template and ran a team workshop to write down and discuss the opportunities. We then went through the end-to-end journey and highlighted which steps each opportunity could impact.
We ran a follow up workshop with our discovery sponsors to prioritise the opportunities.
Opportunities formed well enough to become recommendations
- provide guidance about ESFA’s service offer and processes, and early advice to help shape, simplify or reduce grants
- clarify the governance, structure and operating model for how grant onboarding is project managed
- identify the cause of data loss between ESFA digital products and Business Central and work towards addressing it
Opportunities that need more work in the next sprints
Understand what causes delays within the process that create bottlenecks at the payment stage, and what we can do about it.
Reduce the number of manual datasets created while onboarding grants, particularly in-year and ad-hoc grants. This also includes explore making it easier to bring manual datasets into ESFA’s digital products.
Next steps:
- take forward the two opportunities that need more work into sprints six and seven
- revisit our opportunities to make them more specific and inform our recommendations
Goal 3: analyse and report user research with grant managers who have on-boarded their grants into the funding service
We analysed the user research conducted with grant managers and found the following themes:
- terminology differs between DfE and ESFA
- grant managers want to get money to providers as smoothly as possible
- ESFA is opaque, grant managers have no idea how much work takes place
- there is a lack of written guidance
Next steps:
- wrap up the research with funding policy implementation colleagues
- plan the operational excellence phase of research
Goal 4: revisit our questions and assumptions log to see what we can answer
In Sprint 2, we created a SharePoint list to log our questions and assumptions so that we could track what we have answered through the discovery. In this sprint, we took time to go through the log, update any questions and assumptions we can now answer.
We still have important questions to answer, particularly around the Operational Excellence part of onboarding. This is because we need to carry out user research in this area.
Next steps:
- we will look to answer our remaining questions in sprint 5 and 6
- we will use the question and assumption log for our discovery report and when writing our recommendations