Hypotheses revisited March 2018

The focus of this engagement has been shifting in response to what we're hearing from participants and emergent opportunities. Of note, the Forest Service identified opportunities for 18F to engage with the teams that support two different applications at NRM: Forest Service Activity Tracking System (FACTS) and Heritage data management.

In March 2018, we ran a collaborative brainstorming session with 18F and Forest Service key personnel where we revisited our initial hypothesis and articulated some new ones to guide our work going forward:

Initial hypothesis

"We believe that coaching and elevating agile, human-centered design champions and NRM staff will result in systems that better work for users. We'll know we're right when systems involved improve self-defined customer service metrics."

New hypotheses

• “We believe that regular engagement with NRM's Program Management Office (PMO) Supervisor will result in greater incentive to apply HCD and agile processes for all NRM processes staff and users. We’ll know when we’re right when we see more application and portfolio managers inviting HCD coaches to work with their teams.”

• “We believe that regular engagement with the PMO Supervisor will result in HCD becoming standard in project planning/chartering for all NRM staff and users. We’ll know we’re right when we see documentation around chartering explicitly mentions HCD.”

• “We believe that conducting a workshop with the FACTS team will result in alignment around goals and success criteria for the product team. We’ll know we’re right when we see the team reach consensus on their approach to designing solutions, and the team can articulate to others their shared understanding of success.”

• “We believe that working with FACTS to demonstrate how a team at NRM can use HCD to get to better outcomes will result in increased adoption of HCD and agile practices for the organization. We’ll know we’re right when we see (1) more application and portfolio managers inviting HCD coaches to work with their teams, (2) application and portfolio managers actively changing their processes, and (3) more application and program teams producing design and research artifacts.”

• “We believe that helping the FACTS team engage with users at regular intervals will result in design decisions based on evidence, rather than opinions for the product team. We’ll know we’re right when we see (1) A reduction in the time it takes to develop shippable features, (2) the PM report less tension between the business side and the development team, and (3) a reduction in the time it takes to test hypotheses.”

• “We believe that implementing HCD practices in building Heritage program capabilities will result in a different approach to validating user requirements for NRM staff. We’ll know we’re right when we see (1) user and partners are getting quality information and having a positive user experience, (2) we hear less complaints from users, and (3) more efficient NEPA analysis.”