Lessons from the UK Government's Digital Transformation Journey
It’s probably OK:
In any organisation that’s been around for a while, ways of doing things build up and often disconnect from the reasons they were put in place. Things are cited as “rules” which are really just norms. We had to get really good at working out the difference, and on pushing back on some of those rules to get to the core principles.
Get involved with the backend people:
I know of one government project where the digital team couldn’t even add one extra textbox to their address fields, something users were complaining about, because the backend IT teams were too busy to make the change.
Working with the end user changes staff for the better:
I’ve talked to a lot of teams in large organisations who have taken all the right steps in moving to agile but are still having trouble motivating their teams, and the missing piece is almost always being exposed directly to your users. Whether they’re end customers, or internal users, there’s nothing like seeing people use your products to motivate the team to make them better.