Category: Solutions

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Dyslexia Week 2021 – Keri Harrowven shares her story

Blog title Dyslexia Week 2021 - Keri Harrowven shares her story with image of Keri and a quote reading "Dyslexia has given me the magical combination of being creative, detail focused and analytical."

As part of National Dyslexia Week the British Dyslexia Association has asked the dyslexic community to share their stories, to raise awareness and to help others with dyslexia feel understood.

Keri Harrowven, Digital Workplace Consultant at Invuse, – the new name for Invotra Consulting – shared her experience of dyslexia with us. Keri is keen to support the British Dyslexia Association’s belief that everyone with dyslexia has the power to create positive change, and she champions the work of Made By Dyslexia, that dyslexia is a superpower, with game changing strengths in creative, problem-solving and communication skills.

When did you realise that you were having challenges and that you were dyslexic?

At school I struggled with English, with reading, writing etc. When this was recognised by my teachers I was put in a ”special” class (an extra class on top of usual lessons) where they drummed into us the rules of grammar!

At no point did anyone use the word dyslexia. At parents evenings teachers would give my parents the feedback that I just couldn’t be bothered, and wasn’t trying or that I was clever, but lazy.

Thankfully I had parents who believed in me, knew I wasn’t lazy and didn’t let the comments from teachers dictate my confidence or my future opportunities.

It still breaks my heart that dyslexia isn’t picked up earlier in lots of cases.

How has dyslexia impacted you?

Dyslexia has given me the magical combination of being creative, detail focused and analytical. I feel confident this has been of great benefit throughout my career.

Now, working as a Digital Workplace Consultant at Invuse, I believe my dyslexic thinking skills enable me to uncover and analyse the detail of customers needs. Working with clients like Houses of Parliament, NHS Trusts and when onboarding all of our new clients, I feel dyslexia allows me to creatively deliver a great digital user experience.

What support or help have you received for your dyslexia?

I have had no support for my dyslexia! I had to teach myself to recognise the shape of words. I have to see a word written down, before I can begin to know how to spell it and write it myself.

Do you have an achievement or story, linked to your dyslexia, you would like to share?

I left school with only CSEs and did a year at sixth form to get my one O-level in Maths.

However, when I started work, I immediately could see that I was not actually ‘stupid’, as my teachers had so often made me feel. I was, infact really quite clever when it came to doing the things you need to succeed in the real world of work.
It was when I started working with computers, with a spell check that I really came into my own.

While working for the National Trust I created spreadsheets for the properties to record their daily income. This was previously done manually, on big sheets of paper. I then worked with a developer to build their first database system, to record the income, and this began my passion for delivering a great user experience. I’ve been working in digital development ever since.

I went on to build the first 3 intranets for the National Trust, moving into internal communications and I am now a Digital Workplace Consultant. My passion and knowledge of all things usability and accessibility continually grows. My work at Invuse ensures usability and accessibility are integral to all platforms, to deliver a great experience to all users.

Do you have any advice for someone who has recently been diagnosed with dyslexia, or who, like you, recognises they are dyslexic?

This is your superpower, and you can do anything you want with it. Check out Made By Dyslexia for inspiration for everything you can achieve.

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Blogs business analysis communications consulting Solutions ux

How to prepare, and launch, your new website – The ultimate guide for website managers and content owners

How to prepare, and launch, your new website The ultimate guide for website managers and content owners

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes

We’ve all been there. At first, things were great, better than great even. Together you were a dynamic duo that others envied. But, now things have changed. While you want to evolve and progress, the other has stymied and stubbornly stays the same. Sure, they make a bit of effort but really you know things have come to an end, and you’re just delaying the inevitable. The longer you leave it the worse it gets, and the more complicated it will be to start afresh.

Websites. Anyone who has managed a website will most likely have been in this situation at one point or another. Your current website has run its course and whether it’s because you simply can’t build or adapt your existing site anymore, the code is no longer supported or the costs for updating and maintenance have spiralled – or a combination of all – we all know when it is time to start preparing for change.

Just knowing it is time to change doesn’t make it any easier to start though. If you’ve already got the proverbial t-shirt, you probably also have the scars to match. If this is your first time the prospect might be completely overwhelming.

For the purpose of this article, we’re assuming you already have buy-in from your leadership team/stakeholders to start looking around. So, ignoring the various hoops of procurement for now, let’s break this down into the steps you need to take to prepare.

Step 1: Discover what works, and what doesn't work, on your website now

Before deciding what changes should be made, you need to work out what’s working and not working for you now. Take a look at your existing site. What’s good, what’s bad and, most importantly, where are the gaps that you will need to review to meet the needs of your end users? For this step, you should cast the net wide.

Engage stakeholders

Start by speaking to your stakeholders to understand their vision and requirements for your new website. What problems could it solve for their team? How could it make their service more efficient?

Interview end users

Next come your end users. What do they think of your current site? Why are they visiting? Did they manage to complete their task/find out what they need? If you can form a focus group to explore some of the common themes in more detail.

Review your analytics

Take a deep dive into your stats and analytics – common search terms, length of time on the website, bounce rate – really take a close look so you understand how your site is performing.

Identify the ROT

Carry out a Redundant, Obsolete, and Trivial (ROT) analysis on your content, so you know what you’re dealing with. What you find here will help inform your project delivery timeline.

Learn from the successes and failures of your peers

Speak to people outside of your organisation. Depending on your industry sector people may be really happy to share their experiences with you. I’ve worked across the charity and public sector and normally a call or an email to another organisation will prove really useful, and other teams are more than happy to share.

Of course some desktop research doesn’t go amiss and if you can organise some soft market testing or demos with suppliers even better.

Step 2: Analyse the priorities for your new website

Analyse the priorities for your new website 1. Work out your requirements - remember to look at technical, legal and service 2. Decide on your priorities 3. Plan a roadmap to continuously evolve 4. Find out if any requirements would be better delivered by a different application 5. Include development and ongoing support in your requirements 6. Benchmark and set some KPIs for your new site. 7. Create user personas to guide the design of your new site and content

So you’ve researched your socks off and spoken to everyone? It’s time to analyse.

Tease out the requirements for your new website from your research, don’t forget to look at technical, legal and service requirements you need to comply with, such as WCAG 2.1 Accessibility Guidelines.

You will also need to prioritise these requirements, what must your website have vs what would it be great if it could have? An approach I would always recommend using here is to create a 3, 6 and 12 month roadmap that allows you to continuously enhance your website. Use the MoSCoW (Must, Should, Could, Would) methodology to deliver the “Must haves” and “Should haves” for launch.

A word of warning here – when putting together the requirements for your website make sure you’re doing exactly that. It is easy to get carried away and add requirements for a whole host of additional functionality which support your digital roadmap, when actually that requirement is better served by a different application. The requirement here would be something along the lines of “ability to connect/integrate to a third party site, probably through the use of an API”.

Also make sure you think about what type of service model you will need to meet your ongoing needs, and put these into your requirements. If you don’t have an inhouse developer, make sure you include development and ongoing support in your requirements – you want to make sure you have a website that moves with you rather than finding that you’re stuck with an ailing website 18 months after launch.**

Now is also a good time to benchmark and set some KPIs for your new site. Of course your analytics are a great source for some of this information, but don’t forget to include some stats from your user surveys. If you work in an industry that is open to sharing information you may also have access to how other comparable organisation’s sites perform and want to include some of this information.

Spend time going through your user research and creating user personas. These will prove invaluable when you’re designing your new site and writing content. By really understanding your target audience, and their key user journey you can create a site and content which reflects and meets their needs.

*For those that know me well, you will know that right now I’m whispering (in my outdoor voice) – “Open Source”, “Drupal”, “Collaboration”.
**If you work in local government, the Local GovDrupal project is really worth taking a look at, for a true collaborative service and development model.

Step 3: Design your new website and implement your changes

Tender and procurement

Of course the first part of this is most likely the tender and procurement process – if you have a particular deadline you have to meet for the delivery of your new site, make sure you include this in the procurement process so that everyone is aware of your timescales.

Once you have your selected supplier, there will no doubt be a kick off meeting for the project and various steps they will need to take in order to deliver your new site.

Content and IA

My advice here, if you haven’t already, is to start thinking about your content and information architecture now. Use your user personas and ROT analysis to ensure your IA and content are clear and user friendly.

As part of your analysis you will have most likely looked at content and identified areas of improvement. If you move to your new site without addressing these issues the chances are your new site won’t be as successful as you’d like. It’s time to edit, rewrite and delete so that your new content truly meets the needs of your end users.

If your content is already in pretty good shape this can be straightforward, and you may even consider content migration and then editing on your new site instead. However, most of the projects I’ve been involved in have had a substantial amount of content work and I have opted to eschew content migration to ensure that everything has been looked at.

You don’t have to do this alone – speak to the subject matter experts in your organisation, utilise your existing team or bring in a content specialist. I’d also suggest plenty of tea and an afternoon Hobnob to get you through.

New functionality

You also need to consider any new functionality you’re bringing in as part of your new site or that you need to connect with. Online forms, maps, payment portals, SSO, CRM, databases… make a list, get it on the project plan and start speaking to people now.

Design your new website and implement your changes 1. Agree deadline 2. Hold a kick off meeting 3. Use your user personas and ROT analysis to plan IA and update content 4. Complete any content migration 5. Consider any new functionality needed

Step 4: Maintain and evolve the amazing website you've created

Woohoo! It’s launch day. Due to your thorough preparation you are launching on schedule, you madly hit refresh while you wait for the new site to go live and once it does the sense of relief and accomplishment is fantastic. Perhaps you celebrate with a fancy coffee, or by booking that holiday you have been dreaming of since the start of this project.

But what else? Maintain and evolve. At the beginning you will most likely be focussed on ensuring that the site is performing as expected and making minor changes to content, but after that has worn off it’s time to think about what next. It might be that you have already identified what’s in scope for phase 2 of your project, in which case you can start to map this out and plan. If not it’s time to revisit your original discovery and map out what’s coming next for your website.

I’d also be tempted to rerun your user survey now, if you need to secure funding for the next step of your project these can be quite handy in building your business case and also provide an early indication on the success of your launch.

Once you’ve done this? See Step 1…

Maintain and evolve website 1. Ensure that your site runs as expected 2. Make your content changes 3. Map out what’s coming next for your website 4. Re-perform your user experience survey
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Blogs business analysis communications consulting Solutions ux

Evolve your intranet with an agile approach

evolve your intranet with an agile approach

I’ve launched a few intranets over the last 20 years, however I found moving to an Agile framework truly set the intranet free!

To be perfectly honest I was probably a little sceptical the first time a development team said they wanted to use ‘Agile’. I had developed a good number of intranets over the years and ‘normal’ development approaches seemed to have worked fine in the past.


However I am always open to new challenges and happily signed up for ‘Certified Scrum Product Owner’ training and I really hit the jackpot. The trainer, Gabrielle Benefield (Evolve Beyond), was very experienced and extremely engaging. It was two days training but well worth making the time for, and by the end of the course I was hooked.

The basic steps of the Agile development framework are:

  • Gather the business requirements

    • Stakeholder interviews

    • User research

    • Business objectives

  • Analyse and break these requirements into the individual features and functionality to create a Product Backlog. Dan Radigan explains more in his article: The product backlog: your ultimate to-do list

  • Write ‘user stories’ for each item – “As an X, I want to Y, so I can Z”. This enables the developers and testers to understand who requires what, and why. One way of approaching this is a cognitive walkthrough, detailed in this blog by Brendan Carikas.

  • Work with the development team to estimate the time required to develop each item, then prioritise the items to deliver the Minimum Viable Products (MVP), to be ready to launch to the users

I was then ready to start the first ‘Sprint’, which in our case was two weeks long.

  1. On the first day of each ‘Sprint’ I met with the development team to go through the items I wanted them to work on

  2. Each morning I joined the ‘Stand up’ meeting with the development team to review the progress they had made the day before and hear what they would be doing that day. It also gave everyone a chance to ask any question that had arisen

  3. During the ‘Sprint’ we would meet to ‘Refine the Backlog’ to adjust and agree what were the priorities for the next ‘Sprint’

  4. As the developers finished each item in the ‘Sprint’ it was tested

  5. Then at the end of the ‘Sprint’ the developers demo each completed item

  6. And then it’s back to Step 1 to start the next ‘Sprint’

With Agile development, every bit of functionality becomes a moveable feast and can be refined and developed to hone the user experience.


It’s great because new requirements always come from left field and it allows you to re-prioritise features and functionality throughout the development process.


And after the go-live… Agile allows you to continue the development, to add new functionality and refine the intranet on an on-going basis. This ensures the intranet does not stand still and keeps the users engaged as new features are made available.


The Product Owner role proved to be time consuming but very satisfying! The quality of the end product is great if you put that time in, but it is well worth the effort.

My usability Golden Rules

I was very lucky to work with a great team of developers who with a little guidance from me soon came to share my own Golden Rules:

  • Technology should be invisible – no one cares what it’s built on

  • Never compromise on the quality of the user experience

  • And remember the user plea, ‘Don’t make me think!’

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Blogs communications consulting Invotra Solutions

Keri Harrowven joins Invuse as Communications Implementation Consultant

Keri Harrowven joins the INvotra COnsulting Team as Commuications Implementations Consultant

Invuse – the new name for Invotra Consulting – has added to its team of consultants with Keri Harrowven, a Communications Implementation Consultant. Keri will work with new and existing customers to transform and deliver internal communications platforms that focus on business and user needs in a time where remote working is the new norm.

Keri brings 20 years of intranet, communications and knowledge management, with a strong background in agile development, delivering creative communications solutions and creating outstanding digital user experiences.

"We are delighted to welcome Keri into our team. We've known Keri for many years now and feel that her knowledge and experience in helping customers identify and overcome their communications challenges, will really strengthen the team and what we can offer new and existing customers."

Jamie Garrett, Invuse Managing Director

Invuse – the new name for Invotra Consulting – focuses on helping organisations with their internal communications strategies to enhance and deliver digital platforms that are designed with end users and data analytics at the core.

Invotra Group has spent over 5 years working with enterprise organisations ranging from 35 – 90,000+ employees, each having complex requirements and the need to constantly adapt and change. The structure of our services means organisations can look to Invuse for support at any stage of their project(s) for assistance, from discovery and research to support and maintenance.

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Blogs Data Migration Javascript Security Solutions

Using AWS Cognito and API Gateway to Authenticate

Using AWS Cognito and API Gateway to authenticate by Jonnie Russell

Following on from my previous blog on ‘How to use APIs to build Javascript Apps’ I’m going to look at how we can use three of Amazon’s AWS services – Cognito, API Gateway and Lambda – to host, manage and authenticate access to a simple JavaScript REST API.

Authentication is the process of determining the identity of an entity, to verify that they are who they say they are. Cognito uses JSON Web Tokens (JWT) which I’ve covered in this previous blog as a standard for representing claims securely between two parties, where a claim is a name-value pair which represents information about the subject, that the server/service holds to be true.

We are going to use Amazon’s Cognito service to manage the user authentication to the REST API. AWS Cognito service provides user sign-up, sign-in and access control and Cognito’s User Pools provide a secure directory service, which can scale to enable you to manage millions of users.

steps a user must take to access the protected REST API.

The diagram above shows the steps a user must take, in order to be able to access the protected REST API.

1. As the REST API is protected by access control, the user first needs to obtain a valid JWT. The first step of this process is for the user to login to Cognito using their username and password.


2. Cognito then verifies that the user is who they say they are, by checking that the username and password provided match what’s in the User Pool.

Once the user authentication has been validated by Cognito, it generates and signs 3 seperate JWT tokens:


– an ID Token which contains claims about the identity of the authenticated user such as name, email, and phone_number.


– an Access Token which contains scopes and groups and is used to grant access to authorized resources.


– a Refresh Token contains the information necessary to obtain a new ID or access token.

In Cognito you are able to define the claims that you want the JWT to contain.


3. The next step for the user is to make the REST API HTTP request to the Gateway API service, which can be hosted on a different domain, passing the JWT Access Token along as part of the header of the request. The Gateway API service has a lot of different features, however at its core it is used to route requests to a defined backend. In this case it will be the test Lambda function that we’ve set up.


4. The API Gateway has been configured to use a specified Cognito User Pool to handle the authorisation, as you can see in the image below.

API GAteway configuration for a specific user

When a request is received, the API Gateway first checks that the request contains the ‘authorization’ header and then unpacks the JWT Access Token by decoding its contents (excluding the preceding ‘Bearer ’ string) from Base64 to two JSON strings and a signature.

The API Gateway next retrieves the Cognito User Pool’s public key. Amazon Cognito generates RSA key pairs for each user pool, and it’s that private key that is used to sign the JWT token when it’s created. The public keys are made available at an address:

https://cognito-idp.{region}.amazonaws.com/{userPoolId}/.well-known/jwks.json. 

If the JWT is valid then the request is allowed to proceed to the next stage.

5. The API Gateway passes the request on to the configured backend. In this case it’s our simple Lambda function:

 

6.The response from the REST API is then passed back to the API Gateway.

7. As the final stage, the REST API response is sent back to the requesting client.

This has been an overview on how to apply access control to your REST API using AWS’s Cognito, API Gateway and Lambda Services.

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Blogs Data Migration Javascript Security Solutions

How to make your website cookie compliant

how to make your website cookie compliant banner with cookie icon that has a tick on it

Recent research by Colin Stenning showed 37.78% of local government websites did not provide users with the means to enable or disable non-essential cookies or failed to make it easy to configure them.

Those responsible for creating, managing and maintaining a website must meet the requirements set out by the General Data Protection Regulation / UK Data Protection Act 2018 to be cookie compliant .

All websites have to meet these requirements, but users face a variety of confusing and often frustrating pop ups, banners, buttons and barriers to website entry and cookie acceptance or rejection. 

If website administrators can’t provide straight forward, recognisable options, then expecting website users to understand their rights and what cookies actually mean for them is difficult. 

The responsibility to meet the requirements can be overwhelming. Despite being responsible for policing the rules on cookies, the ICO itself has admitted to failing to meet their own rules at first. Additionally, it is worth noting that following our exit from the European Union the General Data Protection act will no longer be applicable. Although, much of the legislation will be merged with the UK Data Protection Act 2018, in 2021 new legislation is highly likely. Even if a website is compliant now changes are likely, so dealing with our website cookies is an ongoing process.

What is a cookie?

Each time a website is accessed a cookie, which is a small text file, is downloaded onto the user’s device, their computer, tablet or smartphone. .

The cookie can be either a session cookie, which is temporary and expires when the browser closes, or a persistent cookie, that will stay on the user’s hard drive until they, or the browser erases them, depending on the cookie’s expiration date (which should be no more than 12 months).

Where do cookies come from?

Websites put cookies on to devices themselves, enabling users to use their features securely. These are often essential and necessary cookies and websites do not need your permission to add these, as use of their site would be impossible without them.

However, many additional cookies such as functional cookies or marketing cookies may come from third parties, such as advertisers or analytics. These cookies must be declared and permission given by the user before they are installed.

Why are websites still failing to meet the requirements?

Most websites provide information about the presence of cookies, but aren’t unified in how effectively cookie compliance is done. As previously mentioned, the research of Local Government websites, by Colin Stenning revealed that although 98.04% of their public facing websites explain what the cookies are doing and why, only 37.78% made sure users had the means to enable or disable non-essential cookies and made it easy to do.

It is not acceptable to assume that website users will take it upon themselves to understand and access your cookie policy and find out how to change their settings. To be fully compliant, a website has to provide this information in an easy to access and completely transparent way.

How do I make sure I have cookie compliance?

You need to ensure that you have explicit consent from all of your users and that you observe their rights to data. The strict rules of compliance are that websites:

  • Do not use any but strictly necessary cookies without users’ consent.

  • List and explain the purpose of the data each cookie tracks

  • Keep a record of all users’ consent.

  • Allow access to your service even if they refuse cookies

  • Make it easy for users to withdraw consent.

There are some straightforward steps everyone can take to be compliant. Webtoffee is a great example of a plugin that ensures you capture all cookies and can efficiently block these cookies if the user elects to reject them.

A whole host of companies offer the help you may need to ensure you can request, act on and store cookie consent date. Check that any plugin or solution you use allows you to:

  • Scan and track all cookies used on your site. This needs to be redone regularly to keep up-to-date.

  • Produce a cookie report listing all cookies, which automatically updates. This can be used as the Cookie policy for your site and a link should be included in your cookie consent banner.

  • Customise a cookie consent banner. This needs to show users they can accept, reject and access a list of all cookies, in categories so users can opt in and out of specific cookie types.

  • Ensure you securely store data from users who have consented.

  • Provide the users with the option to renew their consent annually.

  • Allow users to withdraw or alter their consent easily at any point in their user journey.

Using a plugin facilitates all of the requirements you need to meet, but it is the responsibility of every organisation to make sure each of the steps to full compliance are completed efficiently.

Why is it vital to be cookie compliant?

In the current climate, data breaches cost companies on average $3.86 Million per breach, with 80% of this accounted to breaches of personally identifiable information, according to a report by Juniper Research. It is expected that globally, this number will rise to $5 Trillion by the year 2024.

Data breaches are serious business and organisations should do everything they can do to not only educate themselves but also embed data protection into their everyday culture.

Being “cookie compliant” is one step organisations can take to minimise the amount of breaches they might suffer through poor data protection.

By ensuring that visitors know what data is collected, why it is collected and how long it is stored for, they can make positive steps in the right direction to protect all data.

For more information, feel free to talk to us. 

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5 technical considerations when designing or procuring a new platform

Banner reading 5 technical considerations when designing or procuring a new platform with image of Luke Parry

Driving digital transformation can prove to be a challenging exercise with the vast number of options available. How do you choose a platform which aligns with your digital strategy and ecosystem?

The short answer is it completely depends on your strategy. Nonetheless, there are 5 considerations that should be reviewed whenever you design or procure a new platform.

Buy vs build

One of the first considerations for procuring a new platform is whether to build a bespoke solution in-house, buy one off the shelf, or go down the SaaS route.

There are advantages to each approach, but the main questions to answer are:

  • What problem are you trying to solve, and is there an out of the box solution/service which already solves it?
  • What are the associated costs?
  • When does the solution need to be delivered?

The last two points are notoriously difficult to get right if you plan on building a solution. Off-the-shelf and SaaS solutions commonly offer a transparent and fixed cost, or at least a predictable cost in terms of the latter, and are much faster to deploy and roll out to the wider business. The main trade-off here is less control over the application.

Data management & Integration

There’s nothing worse than having to manage the same data across multiple applications. In an ideal scenario, applications should only be concerned with the data they need to function, and any data that needs to be shared across applications should be managed between those applications to avoid duplication and a management overhead nightmare.

APIs can help alleviate this problem and help avoid reinventing the wheel by encouraging integration between applications in favour of rebuilding.

When deciding on a platform, consider:

  • What data needs to be shared between this application and existing applications?
  • What are the available options for managing data externally?
  • What APIs are available?
  • Would it be easier to integrate with certain parts of the application rather than replacing everything?

For example, if you need users to be able to authenticate against the application, you can automate the provisioning and de-provisioning process. This may come with an initial setup cost but will save a lot of manual intervention in the future.

Analytics

This is somewhat related to the previous point. Generally speaking, the more data that is available over APIs, the more analytics can be gathered to help drive insights. This isn’t just related to APIs, there are plenty of other tools such as Google Analytics and Matomo which provide a different set of analytical tools, driven by the web traffic to the platform.

To be clear on the definitions:

Data: Information within the platform
Analytics: Discovering patterns and trends from that data
Insights: Obtaining value from those analytics to drive improvements throughout the organisation

The main considerations here are:

  • What analytics tools are available? (e.g. Google Analytics)
  • Outside of analytics tools, what is the availability of data which could be extracted by other means? (e.g. APIs, CSV extracts)

Analytics tools can help you answer many of the questions you face, to name a few:

  • Which areas of the platform are most popular?
  • How many users are using the platform on a regular basis?
  • Are there any parts of the platform which are redundant, and need a rethink/remove?
  • Where should we be focussing our energy with the platform in question?
  • What devices are users using to access the platform?
  • What time are users accessing different types of data?

Cross-platform support

Cross-platform support is basically a guarantee nowadays, especially with web applications. It’s easier than ever before to support working from mobile and tablet devices as well as a desktop.

More and more users expect this level of support from applications, whether that be to just check their calendar on their daily commute or to completely switch to a smaller device for certain types of work just based on preference.

Choosing a platform that enables this flexible approach to work will provide a better experience for end-users. Pair this with analytics and it will be easy to see which types of work are most popular with different platforms, and where to optimise certain areas of the platform.

Security & updates

Last but definitely not least, security. With cyber-attacks constantly on the rise, it’s crucial to make sure that your users and information are safe. As attacks evolve and become more advanced, so do the methods used to prevent them. Information security is something that needs to be constantly monitored and prevented, which in itself is a story for a separate blog. When specifically talking about securing a platform, one of the most common considerations is how to keep the platform as up-to-date as possible without disrupting other workflows.

This is one of the reasons SaaS models have become so popular. Updates (not necessarily security-related) and maintenance are handled by the supplier, often without any disruption, allowing you to focus on your users.

Talk to us

If we can support you with designing or procuring a new platform, or you’d simply like to learn more, please get in touch.

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Blogs consulting Solutions

8 top tips for successful solutions workshops

8 top tips for successful solutions workshops

In my role as CEO, I spend a large portion of my time coming up with solutions – this is actually the part of my job I enjoy most.

I have been involved in hundreds of workshops, some really successful ones and others, a complete disaster. Here are my basic rules when it comes to solutions workshops:

1) Get the right people in the room

The most important people to get in the room are:

  • those that will implement the solution

  • those that will use it

  • those that will have responsibility for its management

Keep the group as diverse as possible, you need introverts who don’t generally want to be in the workshops (on many occasions more than you need the extroverts). 

2) Engender a sense of challenge and/or fun

Make sure you set the tone early, before the meeting begins. Get people thinking about it as something other than a “meeting”.

Ideally, try to hold the workshops in places you wouldn’t hold regular meetings. Get better coffee and nicer biscuits – do whatever you can to make sure people see it as something different. You need their brains to be open and active from the start.

3) Frame the problem in the most generic form you can

The broader you frame the problem the better, however, it must frame the problem itself, not just some generic scenario.

“Workshops to discuss features to deal with GDPR” will only ever have one outcome, try something like “Workshop to discuss GDPR implications and impacts”. The 2nd option will stop the technical minded people taking over the workshop as it’s where non-technical people have the edge.

Key to framing the problem is setting out who runs the workshop. Set yourself up as the facilitator that asks pertinent questions to keep things on track but make sure the subject matter experts are leading through the session.

4) Recognise peoples natural tendencies and force them to think differently

I am the worst case for this. I naturally want to take over and get super excited – and need to be told to be quiet before it even starts!

Setup the workshop in a way that means the least controlling/vocal are heard right at the start and then asked for input throughout. Ask people who are subject matter experts about things that are completely unrelated to draw them out of their world. For example, ask the security expert what they think about the logo, do anything you can to draw people out of their natural tendencies.

5) Do not be afraid of arguments

I don’t mean friendly disagreements. If people are passionate that’s a great thing, but control it so it never gets personal.

Someone in the room will usually be sitting quietly listening to both sides, coming up with a middle ground that no one thought of.

Don’t be afraid to push people into opposite corners so that they really fight their case, just make sure you listen and summarise both sides in a positive manner that focuses on the key points of both, ideally in a way that shows they actually agree.

6) Keep bringing it back to the defined problem (no matter how much you want to go down another track)

The thing with working in this way is that it’s really easy to get excited with ideas and you have to allow exploration to avoid people shutting down. This is great because frankly, the group may see things you’re blind to, however, it’s extremely important to make sure you bring it back to the topic and ask them how their point, view or idea directly relates.

Do NOT chastise them for going off track, you want open minds to come up with innovative solutions.

7) Bring people back to the beginning and rerun through what you have discovered or agreed

Several times during the workshop, revisit the topics you have previously covered to see if they still hold through.

There are multiple reasons for this, firstly to verify the validity of what came before as frequently you will find that things that appear critical earlier in the conversation have become unnecessary or trivial because of later discussion.

However, it may also point out a major gap in the solution when viewed with the earlier thinking. Worst case, you keep everything aligned and reinforce the thinking so everyone leaves with the same understanding.

8) Remember to not have a detailed structure

What works in general meetings kills workshops. Project plans, detailed agendas are structured flows are all the death knell of great solution workshops.

I would highly recommend that you keep project managers out (unless it’s a pm related problem) until the end when they come in to understand what’s been agreed. If they are needed refer to point 4, keep them as quiet as is practical, they are naturally going to want tangibles when you want ideas and a different way of thinking.

Conclusion

Above all, the aim is to come out with a smile and with the feeling that your brain got a workout. If everyone feels like this, you’re probably 98% of the way to the solution you need.

Talk to us

Please feel free to get in touch with any questions or queries. We’d love to support you with your solutions workshops needs.