Learning from building GOV.UK

Cambridge Geek Night 20th February 2012

gareth rushgrove | morethanseven.net

Gareth Rushgrove

gareth rushgrove | morethanseven.net

Work at UK Government Digital Service

Text

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Serious Government Business

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Blog at morethanseven.net

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Curate devopsweekly.com

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The Project

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The Project

- A Beta of a Single Domain for Government- Focus on Citizen needs; Business and Government comes later- Built in-house, at the new Government Digital Service- Not just a site, the start of a platform

The Team

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The Team

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- 1 Product Manager- 2 Project Managers/Fixers- Roughly 10 Developers and Designers- Roughly 20 Editors- Occasional other colleagues and friends

Ship

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31st JanuaryOn Time, Under Budget

The Retrospectives

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- Three individual sessions: process, technology, content- Each between one and two hours- Focused on institutional (over individual) learning- Run by someone not directly involved in the project- Used more than 500 post-it notes

What We Liked

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1. Nice People

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2. Dashboards

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2. Dashboards*

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- Great places to experiment with new technology- Can never have too many screens- Good way of highlighting problems quickly- Great conversation starters

More information on our dashboard collection at http://digital.cabinet-office.gov.uk/blog/radiating-information*

3. Really Continuous Integration

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3. Really Continuous Integration

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- Visibility of test results- Continuous deployment to a ‘preview’ environment- Log of what was deployed when and by whom- Ad-hoc task automation - cache purges, error page updating- Jenkins makes an excellent platform

4. Coding in the Open

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4. Coding in the Open

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- Nearly all code public on GitHub- Already accepted a pull request from outside Government- Asked “why private?” rather than “why public?”- Interest from Quebec, New York and Brazil and more

What We Would Change

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5. Working Environment

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5. Working Environment

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- Project team should have a focussed physical space- Limit disruption and noise as much as possible- Keep monitors, cables, power supplies as identical as possible

6. Tighten Up Processes

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6. Tighten Up Processes

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- Stories should be written cross-team- Define value for every story- Estimate story size separately from sprint planning- Consider support and maintenance process from the start

7. System Complexity

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7. System Complexity

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- Invest time in getting a clear shared view of the model- Use Domain Driven Design or a similar formal tool- Don't be afraid to continually review- Hindsight is a wonderful thing, use it

8. Development Environment

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8. Development Environment

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- More automation of a standard environment- Invest time in better, simpler, shared view- Ongoing effort, not just upfront cost

9. Knowledge Sharing

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9. Knowledge Sharing

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- Limit Work-In-Progress to force more collaboration- More pairing- New things should be sold to others- Create a physical environment that makes sharing easier

Your Next Project

- Nice People- Dashboards- Continuous Integration/Deployment- Open Source- Working Environment- Process- Complexity- Development Environment- Knowledge Sharing

gareth rushgrove | morethanseven.net

More Information on GOV.UK

- Web - https://www.gov.uk- Github - https://github.com/alphagov- Blog - http://digital.cabinet-office.gov.uk- Feedback - https://getsatisfaction.com/govuk

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We’re Hiring

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Questions?

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