Working across organisational boundaries with service communities
You바카라 사이트™ll sometimes need to work with other teams from inside and outside of your organisation, especially if the thing you바카라 사이트™re working on is part of a wider journey that cuts across organisational boundaries.
Working together is difficult. It requires you to balance different priorities, ways of working and funding cycles - and can add extra layers of bureaucracy.
It also often involves working remotely from different locations. Read about how the 바카라 사이트 Digital Service (GDS) changed some processes to .
Using service communities for better collaboration
Some teams across government have had success working in groups called 바카라 사이트˜service communities바카라 사이트™. Service communities are networks of people formed around user journeys.
These journeys tend to be made up of several elements and transactions and often cut across organisational boundaries.
Service communities can help people from across the public sector, including policy, digital and operations, to work together.
Collaborating in this way has helped the community members address the more common collaboration challenges, as well as do things like:
- better understand their users - for example, some communities have developed personas to help them gain a better understanding of what their users are trying to do
- collaborate across organisational boundaries - for example, by gaining access to the people they need to talk to at regular meetings and workshops
- shape the design of the wider user journey
You can .
Set up a service community
Before you set up a community, first check whether there바카라 사이트™s already one in place for your area of interest.
You can do this by joining the .
If there isn바카라 사이트™t a service community for the area you바카라 사이트™re working in, you could adopt some of their ways of working to either:
- start a service community of your own
- work across organisational boundaries (or across functional boundaries within your organisation) in a less formal way
For your community to be successful, you바카라 사이트™ll need to make sure you바카라 사이트™re involving the right people and that it has a clear purpose.
Work out what your community is for and invite people to join it
It바카라 사이트™ll be much easier to get people to join your community if you can give them a clear idea of the problem they바카라 사이트™ll be helping to solve and why it바카라 사이트™s a good use of their time. So start by working out what you want to achieve.
Once you바카라 사이트™ve done that, put together a statement (sometimes called a 바카라 사이트˜proposal document바카라 사이트™) that explains what the community will do together and why. You can send this to everyone you think needs to be involved.
You can to see what sort of information to include.
Ideally, your community would be made up of people from:
- all the organisations who have a stake in the service area you바카라 사이트™re looking at
- across the policy, operations and digital professions
It바카라 사이트™d also include a mix of senior people who can influence the strategic direction of the service and people at delivery level, who understand the detail.
You probably won바카라 사이트™t be able to get all those people together in one go, though. So start by inviting the people you know and build from there.
Agree ways of working
Once you바카라 사이트™ve got a few people together, it바카라 사이트™s useful to agree and document things like:
- why you바카라 사이트™ve set up the community
- common objectives
- whether meetings or calls will take place and how often
- who바카라 사이트™s in charge of facilitating meetings
- how you바카라 사이트™ll share information and resources
The document you put together is sometimes called a 바카라 사이트˜terms of reference바카라 사이트™. You could also use something like a Trello board.
Map your service area
Once you바카라 사이트™ve agreed ways of working, it바카라 사이트™s useful to map your service area. Start by building a 바카라 사이트˜service landscape바카라 사이트™, which shows how the service is currently delivered both online and offline.
This will help you build a common understanding of what needs fixing and where you could have most impact.
Set up communication channels
Communication issues are a common blocker to cross-departmental working.
It바카라 사이트™s crucial you can talk to each other between meetings. This will help you strengthen relationships, get feedback or input on your work and make sure everyone maintains the same understanding of what you바카라 사이트™re doing.
Setting up digital channels is usually the best way of making this happen. For example, you could:
- set up a Google group, which acts as an online forum and email list
- create a Slack channel for everyone to use
- arrange workshops and calls that everyone can dial into
- have a shared online calendar
Sharing things like documents and calendars can be tricky, as departments tend to use a range of different admin systems.
HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) and the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) faced this challenge when they .
The DWP members of the team initially couldn바카라 사이트™t access HMRC바카라 사이트™s project management tools. The team got access for their DWP colleagues by providing HMRC email addresses for them to use during the project.
Don바카라 사이트™t worry if it바카라 사이트™s not possible to get everyone using your preferred tool, though. The most important thing is to share things regularly - even if you have to email documents to one another.
And where possible, work in the open and publish things on the internet. Anyone can access a blog post.
Run your service community
Once you바카라 사이트™ve set up your community, there are some ways of working it might be useful for you to adopt.
Share research insights and data where possible
Collaborating on research and sharing research findings is useful for several reasons. Firstly, it바카라 사이트™s cheaper, because you don바카라 사이트™t have to run separate rounds of research.
It also spreads knowledge and gives community members access to insights they wouldn바카라 사이트™t otherwise have.
So invite people from a range of professions to attend your research sessions.
HMRC and DWP did this when they worked on Check your State Pension. It allowed them to introduce their policy and legal colleagues to user-centred design principles and made it much easier to set up pairing sessions with content designers.
It바카라 사이트™s also much easier to solve disagreements if everyone has access to the evidence.
Agree a common language
Agreeing a common language can also prove useful. The start a business community found this helped them keep everyone on the same page.
It allowed them to agree on the meaning of important words like 바카라 사이트˜company바카라 사이트™, 바카라 사이트˜sole trader바카라 사이트™ and 바카라 사이트˜validation바카라 사이트™. Having different interpretations of these words could have made it more difficult for them to progress their work.
Create a common backlog
Some of the existing service communities have had success working from a common backlog.
If you바카라 사이트™re struggling to come up with things to put on the backlog, any potential improvements you found when working on your service landscape are a good place to start.
Each of the teams within the community will also have their own departmental priorities. It바카라 사이트™s useful to talk about these when you바카라 사이트™re working out what should go in your backlog.
Existing communities have included the following sorts of things on their common backlogs:
- the creation of
- signposting to relevant transactions
The start a business community uses a Trello board to help them keep track of the work they바카라 사이트™re doing.
Share your experiences
We바카라 사이트™d love to hear about your experiences of working in this way. Post in the and share your experiences by blogging.
Further reading
You can read about to solve big problems for users.
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Guidance first published