Presentation on what the team behind GOV.UK learned from the rapid agile development process.

1. Learning from building GOV.UK
Cambridge Geek Night 20th February 2012
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2. Gareth Rushgrove
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3. Text
Work at UK Government Digital Service
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4. Serious Government Business
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5. Blog at morethanseven.net
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6. Curate devopsweekly.com
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7. The Project
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8. - A Beta of a Single Domain for Government
- Focus on Citizen needs; Business and Government comes later
- Built in-house, at the new Government Digital Service
- Not just a site, the start of a platform
The Project
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9. The Team
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10. - 1 Product Manager
- 2 Project Managers/Fixers
- Roughly 10 Developers and Designers
- Roughly 20 Editors
- Occasional other colleagues and friends
The Team
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11. 31st January
On Time, Under Budget
Ship
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12. - Three individual sessions: process, technology, content
- Each between one and two hours
- Focused on institutional (over individual) learning
- Run by someone not directly involved in the project
- Used more than 500 post-it notes
The Retrospectives
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13. What We Liked
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14. 1. Nice People
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15. 2. Dashboards
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16. - Great places to experiment with new technology
- Can never have too many screens
- Good way of highlighting problems quickly
- Great conversation starters
* More information on our dashboard collection at http://digital.cabinet-office.gov.uk/blog/radiating-information
2. Dashboards*
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17. 3. Really Continuous Integration
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18. - Visibility of test results
- Continuous deployment to a ‘preview’ environment
- Log of what was deployed when and by whom
- Ad-hoc task automation - cache purges, error page updating
- Jenkins makes an excellent platform
3. Really Continuous Integration
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19. 4. Coding in the Open
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20. - Nearly all code public on GitHub
- Already accepted a pull request from outside Government
- Asked “why private?” rather than “why public?”
- Interest from Quebec, New York and Brazil and more
4. Coding in the Open
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21. What We Would Change
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22. 5. Working Environment
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23. - Project team should have a focussed physical space
- Limit disruption and noise as much as possible
- Keep monitors, cables, power supplies as identical as possible
5. Working Environment
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24. 6. Tighten Up Processes
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25. - Stories should be written cross-team
- Define value for every story
- Estimate story size separately from sprint planning
- Consider support and maintenance process from the start
6. Tighten Up Processes
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26. 7. System Complexity
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27. - Invest time in getting a clear shared view of the model
- Use Domain Driven Design or a similar formal tool
- Don't be afraid to continually review
- Hindsight is a wonderful thing, use it
7. System Complexity
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28. 8. Development Environment
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29. - More automation of a standard environment
- Invest time in better, simpler, shared view
- Ongoing effort, not just upfront cost
8. Development Environment
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30. 9. Knowledge Sharing
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31. - Limit Work-In-Progress to force more collaboration
- More pairing
- New things should be sold to others
- Create a physical environment that makes sharing easier
9. Knowledge Sharing
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32. - Nice People
- Dashboards
- Continuous Integration/Deployment
- Open Source
- Working Environment
- Process
- Complexity
- Development Environment
- Knowledge Sharing
Your Next Project
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33. - Web - https://www.gov.uk
- Github - https://github.com/alphagov
- Blog - http://digital.cabinet-office.gov.uk
- Feedback - https://getsatisfaction.com/govuk
More Information on GOV.UK
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34. We’re Hiring
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35. Questions?
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