Continuous iteration

Building a new online catalogue for the Parliamentary Archives

Lorna Kennedy, Nicky Hilton, Maggy Dean and Joe Foster, 17 May 2019 — Collaboration culture, Continuous iteration, Focus on core work, Unity without uniformity

We recently completed a project with the Parliamentary Archives to create a new website and we talk about the lessons we learned in this blog post.

Working on the 'get kit' service design workstream

Dan Barrett and Sian Hodges, 17 April 2019 — Collaboration culture, Community, Continuous iteration, Focus on core work, Service design

We've recently been looking to improve how our users get their software and hardware when they join Parliament. Dan Barrett and Sian Hodges have written about the last eight weeks of work, what they did, and what they learned.

Using retrospectives as part of your team culture

Laura Bennett, 20 March 2019 — Continuous iteration, Cultural values, Focus on core work

Laura Bennett is a portfolio manager who's written about retrospectives and why it's important to regularly look back at your work.

What we did with our team health survey results

Glenn Scott, 27 February 2019 — Care, Collaboration culture, Continuous iteration

One of our director's objectives is to have a healthy and happy team. One way we do this is with a team health survey so now that we've reviewed the results, what are we doing with them?

A new way of working: single technical direction

Penny Young and Tracey Jessup, 15 February 2019 — Continuous iteration, Focus on core work, parliament.uk

To improve PDS focus on delivery and its ability to effectively prioritise work on a new website for Parliament, our development team is moving to a new way of working.

Keeping it simple: content principles for Parliament

Rebecca Hales, 8 February 2019 — Collaboration culture, Content design, Continuous iteration, Experts in what we do, parliament.uk

Information is the currency of the House of Commons and House of Lords with 37 pieces of new content published on parliament.uk every day, on average. We've created a set of content principles to maintain standards and help our editors.

Changing how we design and deliver services

Rebecca Elton, 12 December 2018 — Collaboration culture, Continuous iteration, Focus on core work, Service design

In the Digital Service, we’ve spent the past four years delivering a lot of change but we also realised that we need to re-think some aspects of how we operate. Rebecca Elton, director of service design, explains what this means for Parliament.

Understanding what our users are searching

Sara Reis, 3 December 2018 — Continuous iteration, Data and search, Focus on core work, Open, parliament.uk

Understanding how and what users search on Parliament’s website helps us continually improve the search function. We wanted to understand if there was a difference between parliamentary language and what users are searching. Data analyst, Sara Reis, shares the findings.

Parliamentary facts and figures from the Commons Library: the ultimate pub quiz questions

Rosie Barber, 30 November 2018 — Collaboration culture, Commons Library, Continuous iteration, parliament.uk

Online content manager, Rosie Barber, has written about improving a previously overlooked section on parliament.uk.

Westminster – not as unique as we might think

Caroline Auty, 2 November 2018 — Collaboration culture, Community, Continuous iteration, Experts in what we do

Caroline Auty attended the recent ANZPIT forum in Australia, which is an annual gathering of parliamentary IT people, and she's blogged about the best bits.