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Phase 2
Execute
Phase 2 - Execute
Total Duration: 3 months
Time: 15-20 hours/week
Overview
It’s time to launch your sprint! During this phase, the tech teams develop their products. Your role is to facilitate this process, which will include several tasks and milestones.
Duration and time are estimated based on 1 problem statement, a team of sprint leaders of 2 - 4 individuals, and 3 - 5 tech teams (with a recommended maximum of 6).
Goals
- Kick off the sprint
- Manage weekly communications
- Motivate sprint participant progress
- Execute sprint milestones
How To Execute Your TOP Sprint
Ongoing Tasks:
Total Duration: varying weeks
Time: varying hours/week
These are your main tasks and resources to execute key action items throughout Phase 2.
TO DO:
1
Send calendar invitations for all sprint milestone calls 1 - 2 weeks in advance. Sprint milestones include user research, data exploration, concept pitch, beta demo, product sustainability workshop, MVP demo, and a showcase event.
Tip
Facilitating milestone calls at the same time and day of the week allows for the most effective cadence. You may want to share calendar invitations for all milestone calls upfront.
2
Send weekly emails to share reminders of key actions that sprint participants should take between milestones. You may also want to post key actions in your selected communication tool (i.e. Slack or Teams).
3
Develop a facilitation guide for each milestone call. Use the resource below to develop your weekly emails and milestone agendas. You will use this guide consistently throughout your sprint.
4
Facilitate milestone calls.
Tip
Assign a designated facilitator and note-taker from your team.
5
Connect the tech teams with experts whose areas of expertise are relevant to the team’s problem statement. Experts can be user advocates and data, community, and policy experts.
6
Monitor the progress of each tech team. Check-in 1:1 as needed.
Step 1: Kickoff
Total Duration: 1+ weeks
Time: 10 hours/week
Kick off your sprint by hosting a call for all sprint participants to meet and learn more about the problem statement(s). During these first 2 weeks, tech teams will also develop a plan for their work during the sprint.
TO DO:
1
Facilitate a kickoff call.
- Sprint participants (e.g., sprint leaders, tech teams, user advocates) introduce themselves.
- Sprint leaders provide high-level information on the sprint process and timeline.
Step 2: User Research
Total Duration: 2-3 weeks
Time: 20 hours/week
After the kickoff call, tech teams will begin user research. They will connect with user advocates who can offer insights into their communities. During this process, participants will likely require more guidance and introductions.
TO DO:
1
Provide teams with resources to conduct user research. Linked below are some useful resources.
2
Tech teams begin connecting with user advocates to learn more about the needs and pain points of the communities they represent.
- Tech teams should also consider reaching out to additional advocacy organizations, service providers, or others with experience relevant to the challenge. If they already have end users or partners, they can certainly collaborate with those groups during the sprint.
3
Consider facilitating a problem statement 101 call.
4
Facilitate a user research milestone call. User research is ongoing throughout the sprint, but this milestone is solely dedicated to reporting out on user research that informs the rest of the sprint. This is one way the TOP sprint process emphasizes human centered design.
- Tech teams share about their target end users, as well as plans for continued user research.
- Sprint leaders and user advocates provide feedback to each team, suggesting additional ways to reach potential end users.
Step 3: Data Exploration
Total Duration: 2-3 weeks
Time: 20 hours/week
In this next milestone, tech teams begin identifying and exploring relevant datasets. Tech teams will connect with data stewards via email and phone to learn more about available datasets. Participants will still need some guidance from the sprint leaders.
TO DO:
1
Share the list of suggested datasets that includes dataset descriptions, links, and data steward contact information.
2
Facilitate a data exploration milestone call. Products should all use federal open data, so this milestone is an important opportunity to ensure teams can find the data they need.
- Data stewards provide an introduction to datasets in which they have expertise.
- Tech teams give brief updates on what data they are looking for.
- Sprint leaders facilitate a Q&A between data stewards and tech teams.
3
Tech teams begin data exploration.
- In addition to the datasets identified by the sprint leaders and data stewards, provide tech teams with additional resources to explore open federal data.
- Tech teams begin exploring datasets and identifying questions they would like clarified by data stewards in the data exploration milestone call.
Tip
By the beginning of this milestone, tech teams should have already explored available data and thought about the type of data they will need.
Share these resources:
- Data.gov - Search over 200,000 datasets from federal agencies.
- Census.gov/data - Access to all data products and tools from the Census Bureau.
- StackExchange.com - A vibrant open data community, which is a great place to ask questions and find quick answers to your data and developer-related questions
Step 4: Product Development
Total Duration: 4-6 weeks
Time: 20 hours/week
Over the course of the next 5-6 weeks, tech teams will develop their products. Two weeks into this process, tech teams will present initial demos of their product ideas to all participants.
TO DO:
1
Encourage tech teams to begin preparing for an initial demo by engaging in scoping, ideation, design, and development.
2
Facilitate a “Concept Pitch” milestone call.
- Sprint leaders assign each tech team a time slot during this milestone call to share their initial progress. This call is best facilitated via video conferencing.
- Sprint leaders, user advocates, data stewards, and other tech teams offer feedback to each team.
Tip
There will likely be significant variation in terms of progress and product maturity. Some teams may present using a slide deck with initial concepts, while others may have wireframes, mockups, or initial tools in progress.
3
Facilitate a Beta Demo milestone call.
- Teams come together to showcase and share feedback on more mature versions of their products. Typically, tools have reached at least wireframes and have some functioning features by this stage.
- Beta demos provide another opportunity for feedback from the user advocates, data stewards, product advisors and other tech teams— and a chance for teams to showcase the progress they have made since the concept pitch.
Tip
See pages 11 - 12 in the Milestone Facilitation Guide in Ongoing Tasks #3 above for more details.
4
After the demo, encourage teams to:
- Incorporate feedback from the demo.
- Begin testing their products with end users. User advocates can help to identify potential end users who could serve as beta testers of the tools.
- Consider key metrics they plan to use for measuring usage and impact (e.g., number of downloads, number of monthly active users, etc.).
Step 5: Minimum Viable Products
Total Duration: 2 weeks
Time: 15 hours/week
The last two weeks of the sprint include facilitating final demos, and beginning to plan an end-of-sprint event.
TO DO:
1
Tech teams begin to prepare for a Final MVP Demo. Teams will present a Minimum Viable Product (MVP), which has enough features to allow for testing.
2
Facilitate a Final MVP Demo.
- Sprint leaders set a time with each team for a final presentation of what they have built during the sprint. This can be another milestone session with all teams present, or one-on-one calls with each participating tech team. MVP demos culminate the sprint process for tech teams, and allow sprint leaders to assess the results.
Tip
The audience for each MVP demo should be sprint leaders, 1-2 user advocates that the team worked closely with throughout the sprint, and any champions from your agency who are interested in seeing the sprint outcomes.
3
After the demo, encourage tech teams to:
- Incorporate feedback from the demo and continue iterating on their product long past the end of the sprint.
- With input from user advocates, continue to test their product.
- Develop plans for launching the product to users (if new), or rolling out a new feature of an existing product.
Tip
Tech teams can coordinate with user advocates and community organizations who can share the products with intended end users through their outreach platforms.