Digital

Moveable Transactions Project: creating a multi-disciplinary team

September 11, 2024 by Stewart Hamilton No Comments | Category Digital Assurance Office, Digital Scotland, Technology Assurance Framework

Guest blog by Laura Johnstone, Continuous Improvement team, Digital Assurance Office.

Introduction

Registers of Scotland (RoS) are undertaking a project to build, launch and maintain two new public Registers, introduced by the Moveable Transactions (Scotland) Act 2023. The timeline for the commencement of the Registers is dependent on the implementation of secondary legislation. Read our first case study with the Moveable Transactions team on active learning and applying lessons in real time.

Context

Ensuring projects have the right capacity and capability consistently emerges as a dominant challenge in major digital project reviews. You can read about what we learned from major digital project reviews in 2023-24 on our blog.  We have also shared detailed insights on resourcing and capability.

The Moveable Transactions project has received assurance under the Technology Assurance Framework with major digital project reviews and a Discovery Digital Scotland Service Standard (DSSS) assessment. RoS has been on a digital transformation journey to develop and deliver digital improvements. The organisation now has in place patterns, processes, ways of working and a mature technology stack. There are established working methods and approaches, for example all new services are Cloud first.

The DSSS assessment and major digital project reviews identified the project having in place a well resourced, multi-disciplinary agile team. This case study explores the approach taken to building an effective multi-disciplinary team.

Activities

• RoS understands the multidisciplinary team needed to deliver a digital service – this understanding enabled the Moveable Transactions project to put in place a full team including product managers, service designer, user researcher, business analyst, developers, tester and an agile coach
• as an organisation, RoS prefers an Agile methodology, however there is discretion within project teams to consider the delivery methodology that works best for the product they are delivering
• the Moveable Transactions team evolved their Agile methodology to meet the needs of the project and the preferred working methods of the team
• RoS has clear project governance requirements that projects work within, for example, providing formal progress reports to project boards
• the Moveable Transactions team have been empowered to deliver the agreed priorities for the reporting period without ongoing scrutiny of team performance
• as well as reporting into the project board, the Moveable Transactions team have also reported into the service alignment team
• the service alignment team helps to prioritise the initiatives being generated from within the different project teams in RoS
• the Moveable Transactions team have been working collaboratively with a range of supporting ceremonies including a daily stand up and formal fortnightly planning sessions
• there has been active consideration of how the Moveable Transactions team is performing with retrospectives to consider process flows and where practice can be improved
• RoS has a number of Communities of Practices (CoP) that support the individual professionals working in each project team
• the CoP provide the opportunity to share good practice, discuss challenges and collectively consider solutions

Reflections

• RoS has a mature understanding of the roles needed to deliver a digital service – a success factor for the Moveable Transactions project has been having the authority to recruit to the roles needed for successful delivery
• the Moveable Transactions team was granted the autonomy to structure the team to meet the needs of the project and the preferences of those in the team – this has supported high performance
• the ethos of continuous improvement has enabled the team to reflect continuously on how it is working and if changes are needed
• team connection and communication have been critical with ongoing reflection on how the team is working together and where changes are needed – having a clear understanding of the roles in the team and governance and reporting arrangements has been critical to support effective performance
• the CoP approach ensures that although people are working in their individual teams, they aren’t siloed in those teams – it has allowed a good awareness of what is happening with different products across other areas of the business, fostering collaboration within and across teams
• standard organisational approaches allow teams to focus on the product they are developing – there are blueprints and templates which, although not mandated, if followed mean there is a tested path available to project teams
• working with common standards by using design systems takes a lot of the discovery out of those issues – this allows teams to move at a faster pace, ensuring quality with what they are building

Find out more

For more information about this case study contact PMO.Support@ros.gov.uk

The Technology Assurance Framework (TAF) is designed to help prevent digital projects from failing for common reasons, improve delivery and ensure that the lessons learned from previous experience are reflected and embedded in future practice. The Digital Assurance Office are working with organisations to share information which might help others deliver digital projects and we have been publishing our insights and case studies on our digital blog.

Focusing on resourcing we have produced two other case studies

• Transport Scotland’s experience of creating a multidisciplinary team to deliver National Entitlement Card Smart Ticketing
• the Census programme’s reflections and learning points around resourcing

If you want to get involved contact us at DigitalAssurance@gov.scot

For further information and signposting to advice and support on programme and project management contact the Programme and Project Management Centre for Expertise. The Scottish Government programme and project management principles are available and apply to any project of any size.

The Scottish Digital Academy is the public sector centre of expertise for digital capability and can provide information, advice and guidance on developing digital, data and technology skills to support transformation.

For expert guidance on delivering a digital project visit the Digital Scotland Service Manual.

The Social Security Programme: Our Story Team are part of a wider legacy portfolio, whose goal is to capture and disseminate eight years of acquired knowledge, capabilities and lessons learned to demonstrate that irrespective of the size, nature or maturity of your Programme, your profession or career pathway, ‘Our Story’ has the potential to build individual and team skills and capabilities whilst improving the effectiveness and quality of your delivery. They do this through a variety of means from building case studies, interviews and blogs to facilitating workshops and resource loans, for the benefit of Social Security Scotland, the wider Scottish Government and public sector. You can access their resources on Pathways or contact the team: socialsecurity.ourstoryteam@gov.scot

Tags: Continuous Improvement, Digital Assurance Office, Moveable Transactions, Registers of Scotland, Technology Assurance Framework

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