Back to Basics: Right Tool for Right Problem in the DoD (Part Four)
For those of us who use Agile methodologies to manage and perform work, the term ‘information radiator’ is not new. In fact, it is somewhat self-explanatory in context. In world where functional team members are not always working in the same facility, at the same time, digital tools are imperative to maintain continuity.
So what is an information radiator, anyway? In Agile, this is a tool that is intended to be centralized to the team, used to communicate important information. The goal is for everyone involved in the project to have a reliable, highly-visible set of data related to the project or project metrics. The goal is to communicate status and important metrics to the team and stakeholders. In software it is common that the team performing the work is highly technical and the buyer or customer is not. These types of tools enable transparency and prompt communication by being both highly visible and regularly updated.
In our interviews, there is high demand for metrics and transparency in the government. The challenge for our users is this often means taking systematic data, aggregating emails, re-reading notes and compiling PowerPoint slides. This may be visually appealing, but:
- It is old the moment it is created.
- Further analysis of data is laborious.
- Finding historical data on slides is difficult.
This is not intended to be a bashing of slides. Slides serve a purpose, and can be extremely beneficial when used well. The proposal here is that facts and figures are not as useful when put into a static document that is not designed as a database or for text-based searching.
Sequenced Implementation
There is surprisingly some logic in this being part four of the series. The information radiator can be introduced earlier, but it really starts to become powerful when it is integrated with other features like project management software (see: Part One of this series).
Without good data, the information that you intend to radiate is a ‘garbage in — garbage out’ situation.
We want good data, right? Our first step is a soft introduction to project management tools. If we are successful, the outcomes in the long run will be much better. The tools are intended for more rapid feedback, and furthermore, for scalable analytics. Need a new field? Have one made. Worried about data integrity? Use select fields in lieu of open text fields. Want a transparent and traceable workflow? Use Jira’s project or service management tools.
With a solid project or service management workflow and task tracking adoption, we can really let the wizardry of tools like Jira and Confluence start to shine. Out of the box, these tools work well together and allow for display of various baseline metrics that leaders might be interested in observing. Say you are interested in learning about how many tasks your team has in a given status, easy enough! Want to narrow that down based on a custom field or component? Done.
Without that data, though, say you have a system that already manages your highly complex workflows and you’re managing highly secured data. This is a harder use case to convince others to use Confluence instead of PowerPoint, but we still aim for that solution. Why? Circling back to earlier in this article, the point is that information is near-real time or real time to make good decisions. It is important that there is a historical record for document retention, and version control to avoid inadvertent deletes. It would also be very helpful to have this information readily retrievable.
There are some good starting places if you do not have tasks or a workflow to manage. Say you just have a team that sometimes needs to work remotely, or a teammate that would benefit from cross-training to enable more efficiency in your organization that is not collocated with you. How would you communicate with that person? How do you manage time zone differences across a globally distributed organization and ensure that everyone is on the same playbook?
Additionally, when you have users using a common information radiator solution across the organization, your parts become a little more interchangeable. Your reporting becomes easier, the data is all collocated, and instead of a human regurgitating information in multiple meetings, that information can be automatically pulled from one or multiple projects, one or multiple radiators and displayed for consumption in a usable format for that leader. In an ideal world where Jira is also adopted, the power of query language (JQL in this case) starts to show up as you can combine multiple projects and get a more programmatic or portfolio perspective.
Why Atlassian?
Now, we are not saying that Atlassian is the only player in this market. We advocate for it based on its capabilities AND its availability within secured environments. We are adaptable to other solutions and would advocate for the best value to the government. Full disclosure, we have no relationship with Atlassian as a company or individuals other than being another customer. We support Atlassian because we are convinced that our end users and customers will benefit from the built-in analytics and information sharing capabilities.
Confluence is capable of all of the features in this article, and more. We are not talking about months of work and complex implementation. The goal is to overcome the objection of the transition from the safety and familiarity of PowerPoint to a tool we would suggest offers additional usability benefits. Is it right for every situation? No. If you want, though, you can use Confluence to document manage your PowerPoint attachments.
We are advocating for adoption of collaboration tools in general. Having consistency in systems across and organization is a common desire. If one team performs all of their work in Microsoft Project and another in Atlassian Jira, the dependencies collide. Users will struggle to keep up with the nuances and major differences between the approaches. The result is performance shortfalls that are hard to measure, while perfectly apparent to the teams. Additionally, Atlassian tools are commonly used within the entirety of the US Government and the commercial world. Last check, Atlassian is 70 on the Fortune company list, suggesting stability and a broad customer base.
The available tool we tend to use, Confluence, is much more than just an information radiator. It is designed to be flexible and commonly used as a knowledge base or wiki-style solution. Originally it was built for software teams, but as Atlassian has added more tools and templates, it is obvious that you can use it to track approvals, manage documents, and adapt to most business processes that lack transparency or metrics today.
Additional Thoughts
Information radiators do not have to be wiki-style web pages. Design groups and discovery facilitators that work in a digital space will advocate for other tools that can either supplement or replace whiteboards. Miro and Mural are both examples of tools that technical and non-technical people can use to do additional information radiation and digital facilitation. Whiteboards are often shared and regularly wiped in spite of your firm “do not erase” section. Tools like Miro enable a longer-term transparency into the results of a facilitated design or discovery session. If you have ever participated in a design sprint, SWOT, Pros/Cons, or other business arts and crafts activities, this is a great solution to digitize your results.
Information radiation can come in a lot of different sizes and flavors. We are currently investigating the capability to expand the Confluence solution at Platform One to enable display of third-party systems analytics on a Confluence page, and the limitations associated. There is plenty of documentation and information about how to approach these tasks with commercial flexibility, we are hoping to understand how to do it within the confines of a secured environment.
There is one more tool that would be helpful and potentially could be the consolidation point for metrics, a business intelligence or BI tool. We are advocating that not only should this tool be good at BI, but that it interfaces into the information radiator of choice. There is a lot of work to be done on metrics. We recommend starting simple and adapting as you learn about your initial assumptions. The out of the box Confluence tools can get you started but as you start finding those interesting, you will find yourself quickly back in Excel. That’s actually fine at first, but in the long-term a BI tool bridges the information radiation and real-time data gap that Excel presents.
How do you use information radiators? What other tools are better for you? Are there other government tools that you find to be better than Atlassian?We’re interested, message me on LinkedIn!
