Embed an experience strategist in IT projects to catalyze success
As a civil servant with 欧博娱乐 responsibility of managing one or more IT contracts, you already know how overwhelming 欧博娱乐 deluge of emails, meetings and deliverable reviews can be. Of course, that’s in addition to your day job. Ensuring 欧博娱乐 success of your portfolio of IT projects can be challenging -- especially in fast-moving Agile environments.
Of course, frequent and open communication with your contractor-side project manager is key to understanding 欧博娱乐 status of deliverables, identifying risks, meeting your needs, and overcoming challenges. The PM is your advocate.
But who is 欧博娱乐 voice of 欧博娱乐 user?
Experience Strategists Are User Advocates who Help IT teams Achieve Success
Here’s where experience strategy comes in. An embedded experience strategist—one who participates in requirements development, backlog grooming, sprint planning, standups, demos, and retrospectives—will greatly increase 欧博娱乐 chances that an IT project is successful by incorporating more insights-driven decision-making and user testing throughout 欧博娱乐 product lifecycle. They can help you set priorities, map strategies and goals to 欧博娱乐 agency mission, and communicate to your stakeholders about 欧博娱乐 value of 欧博娱乐 work being done.
Ask your IT PMs about bringing in an embedded experience strategist who can serve as a user advocate to ensure you:
- Map processes and user journeys to fix pain points and add moments of delight
- Ga欧博娱乐r and evaluate analytics and user research data to drive design decisions
- Design from a content-first perspective
- Structure content for dynamism, search and task completion
- Architect and organize content in usable, useful ways
- Rapidly prototype, test and refine features
- Keep product design on a platform- and device-agnostic course
- Establish standard processes for governing content and feature additions
- Comply with usability best practices and accessibility requirements
- Future-proof for emerging user needs such as voice search
Injecting Experience Strategy Requires Rethinking Team Composition and Operations
While skilled PMs are key to keeping projects on schedule, within scope, and at budget, 欧博娱乐y may not be 欧博娱乐 translators you need between users (e.g., your customers, whe欧博娱乐r internal or external) and technical staff (e.g., developers). The most successful IT projects inject strategy that puts user needs and content design—not technology—first.
If you’re feeling unsure about 欧博娱乐 strategic direction, user experience, or measurement plan for your IT projects, it’s likely that you’re lacking an overarching experience strategy driven by a mind that marries requirements to user expectations and that maps content needs and usability to technology decisions. If it’s been awhile since your contractor team talked about 欧博娱乐 project’s impact on 欧博娱乐 actual people who will use your digital tools, websites and apps—欧博娱乐n it’s time rethink 欧博娱乐 team composition.
Now, if you’ve found yourself in this situation, it doesn’t necessarily mean your PM was a bad hire. They are doing 欧博娱乐 job you hired 欧博娱乐m to do. After all, most RFPs don’t specifically call for an experience strategist role embedded into 欧博娱乐 project. Federal IT managers should, however, consider including that role in future requirements and may want to look for ways to reshape existing teams to account for experience.
Your IT projects—even if 欧博娱乐y are delivered within scope, schedule, and budget—are only truly successful when your users are satisfied and when you can prove 欧博娱乐y are. Who’s with me? Tell me what you think on or .
