The brief
Move from project-based work to continuous work. Design for SAFe
Situation
Swedbank had typically run research projects linearly:
Get brief - design and conduct research - hand over the findings.
As part of a broader shift to a scaled agile implementation, we needed to systematise the activities and build a culture of conducting research activities continuously, rather than on a project by project basis.
Task
We were tasked with building a framework to identify knowledge gaps based on analytics data, close knowledge gaps through research, and convert opportunities into design or development opportunities, in a way that was transparent and inclusive for stakeholders across the business.
While doing so, we wanted to expand to take the opportunity to build a robust knowledge repository, to increase efficiency in these efforts moving forward, and ensure information was documented and not in the heads of individuals.
Action
The following slideshow outlines how we iterated and tested our new “design & research for SAFe” approach. Captions for each stage are below the image.
Simply mapping a research and design programme to the PI cadence doesn't work.
If we work backwards from “Value Delivery”., value is realised when the insight is in an actionable state and ready for use by either a designer, a developer, or is able to make a new research question. This must be done ahead of the refinement for the following PI Planning.
If the findings need to be ready for this to happen, the analysis and synthesis needs to have happened prior, and any field work needs to be completed before that.
Analysis and synthesis also has a time cost, so this caps the scope of each research piece, rather than broad and deep pieces of work, the research must instead be focussed.
Since research will always be happening in each PI, we can now guarantee that a research activity will take place, we just need alignment on what questions will be asked. This enables accurate research budget forecasting.
And if we know we will conduct research, but have to agree on where to focus, we can facilitate workshops with stakeholders ahead of PI Planning to align on the appropriate area of focus.
This also sets us up to deliver findings in Sprint 4, enabling stakeholder alignment ahead of the following PI Planning, so we can operate continuously.
Results
Open door design policy
Not everyone needed to be in every meeting, but the transparency of the process enabled end to end collaboration with Product, Business stakeholders, Engineering and others
Accurate budget forecasting
Knowing activities will be conducted every sprint enables predictable budget requests, and predictable scheduling for research or recruitment vendors
Closed loop between data analytics
This format enabled a backlog to collect questions that arose from quantitative data analytics. When we saw something happen in the data but couldn’t understand why, that was flagged and raised with the stakeholder group to question it for research priority