What we did
We interviewed several DDaT business partners from across a number of portfolios in the department. We wanted to understand and explore the relationship between business partners and service teams and their involvement – if any – in the triage process and service assessments.
If we find that business partners have unmet needs in the booking and processing of discovery peer reviews, we will iterate the design of the service to meet those needs. This design history post will focus on documenting design changes made following identified needs.
What we found
Involvement in the service assessment and triage processes from business partners ranges from zero involvement to helping teams to prepare for their assessment and providing post assessment guidance.
In terms of the actual booking and processing, business partners are involved more in a guidance and supporting role.
'I make sure they are aware of what they are, give them examples, provide examples of presentations.' Participant 4
'My programmes haven't required it, just one but know others on the team have experience of them, it's just my ones haven't.' Participant 3
What we found
Not all services go into the triage spend control process or onto the DDaT tracker. Only services that are being built in house by DDaT and go over £100,000 will be placed on the tracker. The DDaT tracker’s main users are spend control, not business partners or the service assessment team.
'Projects are tracked on Trello, that's what business partners use to track their work not on project tracker.' Participant 3
What we found
Not all services go into the triage spend control process or onto the DDaT tracker. Only services that are being built in house by DDaT and go over £100,000 will be placed on the tracker. The DDaT tracker’s main users are spend control, not business partners or the service assessment team.
'Projects are tracked on Trello, that's what business partners use to track their work not on Project tracker.' Participant 3
What we've done as a result
We removed the project code question from the service. This is supported from evidence from our last round of research when we tested the booking journey with service teams. This research showed us that teams do not know their project code.
The research with business partners – and investigation we did as a team into projects and services in DfE – confirmed that not all current projects are on the tracker.
The original purpose of having a question in the service about a project tracker was to use the DDaT tracker as a central data source. It could be linked to from the service and used to pull out the project codes and descriptions for any services or projects that already exist in DfE. But as this research shows, the tracker does not always hold all project codes.
What we found
DDaT business partners confirmed that they do add project codes to the DDaT tracker when they are contacted by someone in a project team, or they hear about a new project or service that is being explored in DfE.
What we've done as a result
This does not affect the design of the Assure your service service or request a discovery peer review, as the DDaT project tracker was linked out to as a possible reference point for users rather than being an integral part of the frontend of the service.
What's next
We identified no direct user needs for DDaT business partners in the booking and administering process of discovery peer reviews. This allows us to move forward confidently in the design that we are not missing unanswered needs for this role.
We will now test the booking, managing and administering of discovery peer reviews with the service assessment team, to learn how they navigate the service and can they do what they need to.