We’re at least 4 weeks into wrapping up a 4‑week discovery. The service manual says you know a discovery is done when “you have a list of ideas you’d like to test at alpha and an idea of which one you’d like to test first.” In practice this line between a discovery and an alpha isn’t helpful. Moving from research into defining ideas creates more questions. Specificity of what we’re doing in alpha matters because we’re looking to partner with other teams. Those teams need to know what they’re agreeing to.
During this discovery, I’ve noticed that I assume the detail in my head is shared by everyone else. It often isn’t. I felt confident about our direction for alpha. Others were still worried. More than once, a detail I thought was baked in turned out to be missing from someone else’s understanding. We’ve got a team that’s good at raising problems and discussing them. Each time, it improved what we’re doing.
A diagram is a good way to get everyone seeing the same thing. A week or so ago I created a rough picture of a solution we could try. It shows how users get results in the NHS App today, and how we could change that – so those results provide context, coordinate with messaging, and align with the approach new teams are already exploring.
I showed the diagram to Frankie – his response was “are you an architect now?” It’s a legit question. I’m not an architect, but I’ve drawn a technical solution. I just want to find a way of moving things forward, having something to talk around. I don’t want to cosplay as a technical person. But I know enough to see opportunities. One team already makes small changes to tens of thousands of result types. Maybe we could make a big change to fewer than twenty. Fewer results. More care in each one. Let’s find out.
Thanks to Christian for gifting me ‘provocagram’.