Sprint 7 Update

Due to the bank holiday this was a shorter sprint again for us. Bal completed her review of the existing user research, focused on the 'New Household' and 'New Bin / Waste Container' request processes, which have very similar flows and therefore could be combined. As always she considered existing service patterns, and other available best practice, to help inform the development of some mini wireframes (which will help guide the developers who are building the forms) and these were added to our existing UX Insights board.

Our Technical Architect, Dave, and the Placecube development team have been busy working on the next integration connector (for the Echo waste management system) which has included updating the APIs to the latest version etc. They also continued confirming which methods to use for each of the calls made to Webaspx and Bartec (for each of the prioritised low code waste services that are being developed in this phase). As this back-end work is all happening behind the scenes, at this stage there isn't anything much to demo to the wider team and stakeholders.

However, Dave was able to share another early version of a form currently in development (which was the 'happy path' for Garden Waste Subscriptions) at our sprint review session. He and Gavin (Chief Product Officer) confirmed that much of the work being done as part as this project is enhancing the form builder product, rather than being just waste service specific. Therefore, as it's being designed to be reusable, it could be applied more widely in the future, for development of other new forms/services (once V3 of the Digital Place platform has been rolled out to customers in the summer). Dave also demoed the 'Bin Collection Day' display widget, which has been built using the 'Fragments' feature within Digital Place - meaning that it can be easily customised (to display any data that is held in a customers account), and restyled if required, through the Digital Place user interface, and then embedded within any page.

The team have continued discussions about next steps and a possible second phase of the project. We are currently exploring the available options around potential scope and delivery models for this etc. Whilst this is still at a very early stage, it's looking highly likely that a proposal for further funding will be submitted to the DLUHC Local Digital team, for their consideration and assessment, once this first phase of delivery has been completed.

Our plan for Sprint 8 is to:  

• Continue building and iterating the front-end forms for the various prioritised waste services.   
• Continue building the integration connectors for Echo and Mayrise and confirming the methods that are currently used, or required, for the various waste service calls.
• Draft the User Research / UX Insights Report, which will accompany the information and mini wireframes which have already been captured on the Miro board - this will provide a bit more detail and narrative about the approach we've take, the various resources identified and used, key insights gathered and recommendations made etc.
• Continue discussing and developing our 'Project Impact Monitoring & Evaluation Plan' for Phase 1.  
• Continue discussing options for a potential Phase 2 of the project - Lead reps from each of the partner LAs to meet to discuss and confirm their priorities and identify work that could be undertaken (if further funding for this can be secured from the Local Digital Fund).

Our next Show & Tell update session will be held online at 2pm on Tuesday 24 May and our Sprint 9 Show & Tell will be at 2pm on Tuesday 14 June, so please do get in touch if you'd like to attend either of these. You can also follow us on Twitter for regular project updates. (Please note that we have agreed to run our last sprint (9) for three weeks, rather than the usual two, due to the bank holidays that are on 2nd and 3rd June).

This project has been funded by the DLUHC Local Digital Fund.