Digital workplace – PoC

To explain this project I am not allowed to write down any names or show any data, therefore I explain the methods, the instruments, and the final result.

Request from the company:

Develop a PoC for a digital workspace that allows stakeholders to file, find and track the information within the workflow for project management, making the process more effective and efficient for users.

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Bank and financial company

Along with Lean and Agile approaches, a Design thinking approach was put in place, working across the phases of:

Exploration
Co-creation
Prototyping
Test
Growth

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My role was to lead the design team, that was composed by two external services designers and me. I was identify as the bridge-person between the team and the business.

Different roles played in the team: designers, data analysts, PMs, tech-providers, IT, process builders.

Exploration

In this phase, we have reconstructed the as-is situation, mapping processes, tools, stakeholders. In parallel, we interviewed a pool of key stakeholders, selected by the role, area and country in which they are involved. From the interviews we were able to discover pain points, workarounds put in place and to highlight the main hot spots and bottlenecks existing in the E2E process.

Psychology teaches us that “ask a person to tell their bellyaches and they will open up like a book” and so that happened. We collected a huge amount of paint points and data, we built a research wall full of insights and opportunities. To simplify the complexity of the data, we categorized the paint points into main categories, within which detail pain points were included.

co-creation

Corporate transformations are not limited to inserting a digital tool, but at the same time, an engagement strategy must be put in place. We started from the stakeholders identified as super users (or early adopters), who in the future will be the ambassadors of this transformation, and who from the beginning must feel involved in the construction of this transformation.

We, therefore, decided to co-create the future vision of this corporate transformation through a one-day workshop. It’s amazing how the vision that emerged exactly reflected the business objective, we received confirmation of the alignment between the business goals and the needs of the employees… perfect, the foundations for continuing the project were solid! The vision became the backbone of the whole project, printed and put on the wall next to the corporate goals.

In addition to the co-creation tables with stakeholders, there were also tables with vendors (two white labels were selected as possible suppliers of the tool). To select the tool that best matched the project objectives, demo days were organized with vendors and a gap analysis was carried out at functional level, user experience and other evaluations based on the data that emerged from the exploration phase.

PROTOTYPe and test

Once we decided on the vendor we entered the development and testing phase of the prototype.
Starting from what emerged from the research phase, some requirements were developed, which were discussed with all the figures at the table to create the user stories and the backlog and to start the development stream. Another parallel stream further developed the engagement model, i.e. a series of internal communications directed to super users, aimed at raising awareness and spreading the value of the project. Test sessions were also organized: recruiting, task track, KPIs to monitor.

From the first round of testing new feedback was collected, which became a new requirement for the second release of PoC which led to the second round of testing.

The final results showed excellent KPIs, in line with those requested by the client at the beginning of the project. Also the measurement through NPS was absolutely positive, with a score of 4.2 out of 5.

All test results were further analyzed and included in the file that was presented to top management and the CIO area.

growth

A growth strategy has been designed for the future E2E implementation of the tool to support PM management.

A DesignOps approach has been studied, in which the design thinking methodology can be deployed in a synergic and scalable way, with lean management and an agile approach for product delivery. To ensure the development and implementation of a tool that helps project management and improves efficiency by reducing time and cost consumption, thus aligning with business goals.

A few thoughts

Finding a digital tool is not necessarily the most difficult part, as much as cultural and mental change, which presents frictions because change is always frightening, also considering how the processes and the way of working as-is are strongly sedimented in people’s working habits.

Another fundamental factor is the commitment on the side of top management, which does not mean starting a top-down digital transformation process, but which must promote this change, spreading its values and motivations.

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