Have a sustainable multidisciplinary team

Effective:

Establish a sustainable multidisciplinary team to design, build, operate and iterate the service, led by an experienced product manager with decision-making responsibility.

  • Establish a digital delivery team with the right mix of skills and roles, providing for the differing needs of the service design and delivery stages.
  • Create your team by accessing different disciplines, some may cover several roles.
  • Embrace capability development opportunities. Transfer knowledge and skills from any external people who work with the team.

Good government services are built quickly and iteratively, based on user needs. Your digital delivery team must be set up in the right way to do this.

They need:

  • a broad mix of skills and roles from the start
  • quick decision-making processes and the ability to change and adapt as the service evolves
  • to be adequately resourced and empowered to deliver the product or service.

This criteria applies through all service design and delivery stages. The composition of the team will change depending on the stage and need.

You should be able to describe your digital delivery team the following roles present an overview of all the different roles that might be needed depending on the complexity of the service. Many product teams' function with just three key roles: developer, user experience/interaction designer and product manager. You will determine the best mix of team roles relevant to your service:

  • product manager
  • delivery manager
  • technical architect
  • user and/or interaction designer(s)
  • content designer
  • user researcher
  • developer/engineers(s)
  • web operations engineer
  • service manager.

The core roles in a multidisciplinary team are consistent from discovery through to launch (live):

  • an individual team member might be responsible for more than one role, especially for smaller projects
  • team members can be Queensland Public Service staff or a combination of staff, contractors and secondees
  • you can also connect with knowledge sharing groups to share ideas, solve problems, connect to peers and work in the open
  • consider seeking capability uplift for existing roles through training/mentoring opportunities.

You should also be able to:

  • show the team principles, vision, rituals, and agile practices
  • demonstrate you have a product manager with the knowledge and power to make day-to-day decisions to improve the service
  • show how team members stay with the service through the stages and how new members will establish understanding of the users' needs
  • show the decision making and approval processes
  • know the stakeholders
  • show that the teams user research activities were developed and overseen by an experienced user researcher and that all team members participated in research
  • demonstrate an understanding of where gaps may emerge in the team structure and how to fill them
  • demonstrate how you plan to share information, work together, and troubleshoot issues within the team as well as with key people external to the team
  • explain your plan to transfer knowledge and skills from any external people who work with the team to the on-going product team.