Welcome Tina!
At this stage of the project, we brought in an extra consultant to supplement our team. While Tina Calabria is only working on the project 10 hours/week, we needed the extra resources to ensure we can meet our pre-Christmas deadline of finalising the user experience (UX) design, information architecture (IA), wireframes, prototypes and final visual designs. A lot to do and just over a month to do it!
User stories
Tina introduced us to her process of writing user stories before UX — to inform the UX, site design and functionality. And we love it! It keeps the focus on users but is also highly practical. The goal of the user stories is to define MVP for release one, based on user needs.
The process involves writing user stories for all our personas, plus writing stories that cover our business needs, including content requirements. (In our next workshop we’ll then rank each user story on desirability, feasibility and value for business to help us decide what will be included for MVP.)
The user story format is:
As <persona>, I want to <goal related to website> so that <I receive benefit>.
For example: As Sarah, I want to find out more about Salsa so that I can validate my peer’s recommendation.
I like this format because it’s simple. The ‘so that’ can be a little trickier but it makes you focus on the why. Why does/would the user want to do this?
Note: We also opted for a cutdown version of the user story process (not an end-to-end customer journey) because while we could spend days writing user stories for the complete customer journey, we only had four hours.
Our tools
Once again, we used to write the user stories. It meant we could all collaborate digitally and create one source of truth.
Stories for Sarah
Below are some of the stories we created for our Sarah (head of digital). These were created referring back to our personas (see our blog on personas for more information) and their customer journeys (see our blog on customer/user journeys).
As Sarah, I want to find out more about what’s been referenced in a tender response so that I can understand its relevance to my business problem.
As Sarah, I want to learn more about Salsa’s vision so I can validate it aligns with my vision.
As Sarah, I want to pioneer new digital services so that I can deliver a better citizen experience.
As Sarah, I want to find out more about open data so that I can advocate for open data in my agency.
As Sarah, I want to watch video content as my preferred medium so that I can qualify Salsa’s work and thought leadership quickly.
As Sarah, I want to learn more about whole-of-government digital platforms and programs so I can validate what I want to do.
Stories for Brett
Below are some of the stories we created for our Brett (head of IT). Again, these were created referring back to our personas (see our blog on personas for more information) and their customer journeys (see our blog on customer/user journeys).
As Brett, I want to look at the profiles of Salsa’s technical staff, so that I can see if they’ve got the skills necessary for my project.
As Brett, I want to find out about Salsa’s technical approach on other projects so that I can see how Salsa might solve my technical challenges.
As Brett, I want to see what Salsa is doing to support the Drupal community so that I can make sure their values around open source align with mine.
As Brett, I want to read technical blogs so that I can keep up with recent trends and find out how they might benefit me.
As Brett, I want to find out about the technical suite that Salsa uses so that I can validate that it’s best practice.
As Brett, I want to see Salsa has built large-scale and resilient enterprise platforms so that I can validate their expertise in this area.
Stories for Dilshan
Below are some of the stories we created for our Dilshan (technical talent). Again, these were created referring back to our personas (see our blog on personas for more information) and their customer journeys (see our blog on customer/user journeys).
As Dilshan, I want to find out about Salsa’s project methodologies so that I know if I’d enjoy working at Salsa.
As Dilshan I want to look at the Salsa staff profiles so that I can get an idea of if I’d like to work with the people.
As Dilshan, I want to see if there are more experienced staff within Salsa so that I can learn and grow.
As Dilshan, I want to know about the scale of the projects so that I’m confident I can grow.
Stories for Mary
Below are some of the stories we created for our Mary (head of comms). Again, these were created referring back to our personas (see our blog on personas for more information) and their customer journeys (see our blog on customer/user journeys). Note: There was also some overlap here with some of Sarah’s stories - below we’ve included the stories unique to Mary.
As Mary, I want to contact Salsa so that I can get a quote for my website development project.
As Mary, I want to see a case study with metrics so that I can write (or to support) my business case.
As Mary, I want to read what other clients are saying about Salsa so that I can feel comfortable in choosing Salsa.
As Mary, I want to see if Salsa has a social media presence and a good website so that it reflects well on me.
As Mary, I want to subscribe to the digital transformation blog series so that I can keep up to date with digital trends.
Salsa stories
In the traditional agile process for web development, we have tech stories for the backend. Tina’s approach adapts that approach to create stories to meet Salsa’s business requirements.
As Salsa, we want to be able to have a good editing experience so we can put blog posts up easily.
As Salsa, we want to be able to add new site sections so that our site is extensible.
As Salsa, we want to have more metrics, so that we can measure the success of our website.
As Salsa we want a clear/better IA and well-named menu items so that Google analytics and SEO is maximised.
As Salsa, we want to be able to easily integrate with other platforms (e.g. email marketing, CRM) so that we can benefit from them.
As Salsa, we want to provide an unobtrusive method of subscribing so that we can convert visitors without annoying or disturbing them through popups or potential roadblocks.
As Salsa, we want to promote our vision so that more players will join the ‘open everything’ movement.
As Salsa, we want to advocate new and experimental technologies so that we can validate the benefits of emerging tech.
Next steps
The next step (another workshop) is to rank the stories across the areas of desirability, feasibility and value for business so we can work out what’s MVP for site launch.
