Collaborative Digital Training
Collaborative Digital Training (CDT) is a programme developed by Founders and Coders and CAST which aims to upskill charities in digital service design and product management via a collaborative appro
Introduction
CDT tested the idea that more than one charity could collaboratively learn the basics of digital service design and product management by identifying a common problem area for those charities to develop into a shareable solution.
Through design sprint discovery and definition workshops, two charities worked together with facilitators from Founders and Coders to find a common problem area and find a mutually beneficial solution idea.
Product management workshops introduced the roles and responsibilities of a product owner and learning exercises related to product management during development of a digital product.
With a prototype created by Founders and Coders and usability tested by the charities, the final section of the programme involved building an MVP over three development sprints where the charity leads acted as Product Owners conducting usability testing and taking part in sprint review and planning.
CDT Workshops were held remotely via Zoom due to COVID-19 lockdown. Discovery, Definition and Product Management had two workshops of three hours each in the morning. We had previously found that workshops of more than four hours became fatiguing, and energy is generally much lower after lunch. In between workshops tasks such as user research, usability testing, prototyping and development were conducted. In the later development phase sprint review and planning meetings happened each week at around an hour each. Programme playback meetings occured towards the end and shortly after the programme was completed.
Structure
Discovery
User Needs Statement
How Might We
Theming HMWs
User Persona
Mapping
Finding a Target
Assumptions/Validated if
User Research Script
Definition
Synthesise User Research
Lightning Demos
User Journey
User Stories
3 part Sketching
Ideas
Crazy 8s
Solution Sketch
Dot voting
User Flow
Prototype review
Usability Test Scripting
Product Management
Usability testing synthesis
Usability testing insights
User Stories
Create and upload user stories (Github)
Sprint Plan
Sprint Review
Build
Product management exercises were repeated weekly while the MVP was being built
Towards the close of the programme there were playback meetings with all partners and a sprint retrospective to close (Stop, Go, Continue)
Reflections
CDT showed that it is possible to find common ground in a small cohort of charites' problem areas, and work collaboratively to design and develop a solution.
The charity leads went from knowing relatively little about digital product design and management to being able to speak and present easily in terms of development and Scrum language. This ability will work well in their favour when applying for future digital funding, or working with a digital partner.
Repetition of exercises such as research/testing insights and creating user stories allowed the charity leads to become much more comfortable with this process.
With more charites represented in the cohort, finding a common problem area that creates a still useful solution would become much harder. However, as a learning experience, these workshops are well suited.
This is a fairly lightweight application of the exercises and with two charities to lead through, the 2 x 3hr/week workshop layout was ample time to complete everything.
Despite this, the commitment from the charities may not be easily made by all. There may well be an even lighter version of this that could be done quickly and cheaply.
The three weeks of development build with scrum meetings was definitely useful for the charities as it was close to a 'real' experience. However it is perhaps not necessary in a paired back programme, and the relevant exercises could focus on creating, testing and improving a simpler prototype.
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