DTC Connected Services · Service Design Discovery

Discovery Phase:

February-March 2024

Research Phase:

March-April 2024

KNOWN

Things we are aware of and understand

• often but not always the same people building teams - procuring and hiring 

• sometimes accessing MAS support

• may be interacting with multiple procurement products, hiring services

• Product is rarely once and done - must be supported/maintained and updated

• the transition from capital to operating funds can impact maintenance/sustainment 

• Some clients they do not have knowledge and capacity to build new Agile teams

• contract renewal point - short term vs long term considerations can be bumpy

• Standing up Agile Teams is costly to business areas

• Not enough support in some areas for modernization, often people take a half approach

• In practice, business areas don't consider the entire life cycle of the product team when bringing in team resources (creates HR/Procurement Debt)

• short term focus (speed, urgency) - can have longer-term tradeoffs

• Procurement is slow and clients want to go as fast as possible (poor planning/lack of resource availability)

• some business areas may have questions about digital roles, sequencing of hires (early hires vs. full team), org design, team formation

• Misalignment right now between our services (no fee) and Procurement Services Branch (fee)

• Current free services also incentivize some behaviours - some not good. 

• Opportunity to build mobile agile teams we can deploy to mitigate and respond quickly to changing requirements

• Given pressure for delivery, people make decisions based on whatever is fastest, easiest, and/or least resource intensive to do. Which might not lead to a good decision. 

Things we are aware of but don't understand (research)

• We don't always have an understanding of budgets for others, this impacts services they can access

• What drives decisions: Budget spending urgency? Actual Solution need?

• How does the cost of a procurement/hiring process drive behaviour?

• Decisions seem to be made based on financial and delivery risk - also avoiding HR risk (easy to defer to contractors)

• People making decisions based on budget available

• People unsure or unaware of how long the product will in play, or if successful to allow permanent staffing

• Short-term resourcing may impact long-term sustainability of products

• People make decisions based on (sometimes unrealistic) timeline commitment for product delivery

• Do classification gaps exist that would favour procurement?

• "complicated" dynamics between contractors + employees

• Many business areas are extremely cost-conscious - may drive behaviour

• I suspect that a lot of Gov teams aren't used to managing a "software production" team and thus prefer to contract as needed for specific deliverable vs hiring digital talent permanently

• Digital talent = production. If a "buyer" doesn't have experience with a backlog approach, it may be hard to envision having full time staff (gotta keep everyone working)

• HMW uncover underlying motivations of folks making decisions

• Risk for union involvement for ongoing work positions not being filled.

• Commitment level of Sr Execs, ADM, DM etc,

• Hiring entire product team without long term work 

• Risk of people not wanting to use recruitment services, as this impacts budget when they can hire using their own resources. This may provoke shoddy practices and impact our image as an employer. 

• Contractors may not have insights into complexities unique to government

• Opportunity to connect to MAS for a more structured and planned approach to modernization and priority initiatives. 

• Budget cuts around April, election year ahead, lots of cost conscious decisions. 

• More flexibility with Procurement than recruitment when it comes to enforcing Agile teams and building products.

• is it intimidating to think about the longer term when this is all so NEW 

• what are the PERCEPTIONS vs REALITIES of sourcing talent?

• PSB don't charge us for their services. If we engage in cost recovery will they do the same?

UNKNOWN

What might people in our ecosystem know, that we don't

• Other SMEs - WLRS, PSFS, AG…

• DIO, MAS, BAT/Scrum Inc.

• DIO/OCG may know more on the amount of IT staff costs

• PSA - Workforce Planning

• IMIT Key Workstream strategy working group - bring evidence to ADM group about problems & opportunities - evidence for creating change

• What are the rules for hiring/creating a new position?

• Leaders who pioneered Digital Modernization/Transformation in BC Gov

• Higher level information about what may be coming down the pipeline that could impact hiring/procurement 

• Their own level of commitment and budget

• alignment with union - they would like to see more talent insourced (better balance)

• Ability to merge qualified lists to centralize and increase consistency for vendors and buying group across government; better corporate  intelligence on needs

Things we are unaware of and don't understand (risk, fear)

• Alternatives to the team-focused approach (is this a blind spot?)

• Do our cients want a more connected service?

• Bias towards certain technologies (e.g. OpenShift) creates procurement risk if those technologies are mandatory. Impacts choices/hiring longer term

• Union impacts for positions that are ongoing for more than 52 weeks/continuous nature

• Level of fear in new areas, often lots of new to agile folks or at the start of their modernization journey.

• If we and MAS both consulting services, how do we define the boundaries?

• Cost of Success - if this takes off, can we scale up to support?

• What is the comfortability of spending vs doing themselves. 

• Identifying which roles should generally be permanent employees, and which roles need not be.

• What is the employee and contractor experience in blended teams. Does that feel good or unequal?

• How can we move ( poach, hehe) contractors into permanent positions within?

Q4 will be a WIN if:

• Identify assumptions for connected service and validate with users (gov business areas)

• Some sort of artefact to inform user's decisions (hiring vs. procurement) + debunk myths/misunderstandings

• Identify our "users" for this engagement

• Understand things we are aware but unknown

• Define cost recovery model, and "cost" structure

• Users provide us feedback on whether this is valuable or not

• Discover more unknowns to further explore 

• Develop/identify a feedback/user group across BC gov

In Q4 our work intersects with:

• e.g. any IM/IT strategy milestones we could inform?

• OKR around DO ability to support partners - does this help us rapidly resource for teams and sustain the capacity.

Q4 will be a FAIL if:

• We identify that people would be deterred from using our services if there is a cost implication

• We don't have a clear plan and vision for how Procurement and Hiring can work together (or not)

Important metrics or signals:

• how would we know, decide, prioritize - what's a signal that we're making things better?

• Our users can articulate their decisions (hiring vs. procurement)

• User engagement (IMBs, hiring/procurement managers) with the process