‘Textra Textra — Read all about it!”
Weeknote 26.03.2021
I’m back — I’ve had a couple of weeks off writing, and this week was a short week (using up the annual leave!) but still just as busy.
I made a new connection on Twitter this week thanks to one of my service design buddy group members MJP and I am looking forward to joining a Service Design breakfast hosted by @RahmaJM1 next week. Check her out on Twitter — seriously impressive!
But, on to what’s been going on this week…
Our minimum viable product for ‘opt-in to travel’ for school’s transport is coming together nicely and after user acceptance testing is has gone back to our fab developers for refinements.
Our multidisciplinary team has worked really well together on this and we will all be chuffed and relieved when it goes out to our cohort of ‘test’ parents.
The project team has involved content designers — shout out to our own Neil Lawrence’s awesome team, subject matter experts, IT operations colleagues from two separate directorates and Sam McLaren to name a few, plus many others. This has been a very collaborative piece and I am really pleased to see everyone rolling up their sleeves and mucking in. The sense of teamwork on this is strong and I am enjoying working with this awesome bunch of people. We have a few more weeks work on this before we are ready to role this out but its all moving in the right direction — so that’s just grand.
In the past few weeks, we have also put together a text message communications campaign for our school transport users, schools, and contractors. This was such an easy, quick win for the business and having the project team so engaged on getting this working and out for use really impressed me. We managed to get the whole thing set up in 4 weeks with it rolling out in the first week of March. We are using the Gov.notify text and email messaging service to do this — it’s a complete doddle to set up and a huge bonus, is that it is so cheap to use. Being strapped for cash in public service, this is such great solution for the business.
A real effort was made in the team and we have already had some very positive feedback from parents about the service. This has made me feel really proud.
Until next time……………………..
