In September, we took an exciting step in transforming how we do digital in Parliament by launching a new Product directorate.
Bringing together the content, customer experience design and software engineering teams, we united the core roles and capabilities we need to build, run and enhance the digital products that keep the House of Commons and House of Lords running.
The Product directorate is working to digitise democracy by making, supporting, and improving our products and services to make things better for users.
Building a shared culture
The existing teams that make up our new directorate already have their own well-established identities, rhythms, and cultures. It’s important to acknowledge these while also beginning to build a shared directorate culture underpinned by common behaviours and values.
How we work, not what we work on
The first step in this process is to deliberately design who we are in Product, and how we want to be: what works well, what we can improve and what we want to leave behind. All of this relates to how we work, rather than what we work on.
Typically, teams can spend more time focused on the latter, and we want to pay proper attention to the former. This will be a multi-year, multi-phase transformation and so strong foundations are key. By agreeing our guiding principles, shared values, early goals, and ambitions, we’ll be well-placed to navigate future challenges.
Testing out multidisciplinary teams
Along with building our culture, we’re also getting our hands dirty. We can only test what works by trying out different options. We’ve formed some early multidisciplinary teams to experiment with some of our ideas and iterate based on what we learn. Teams are forming to work on our core library of design components, developing a new intranet, as well as several products aimed at Members of Parliament.
We’re also looking to grow our team further, so there are plenty of recruitment activities underway, too. If you’re interested in working with us, I would love to hear from you. You can find me on LinkedIn or at spicern@parliament.uk.