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Building capacities within a government agency to build and support a new case management system: part 1
on June 16, 2021
This is part one in a two-part series with our partner team at the U.S. Tax Court about their experiences building their new, open source case management system, DAWSON. For this post, we chatted with Jessica Marine, Product Owner and Deputy Clerk of the Court, Case Services Officer.
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Building product management capacity in government part 3: A day in the life of a new product owner
on May 3, 2021
This is part four in a series of posts about building product management capacity in government agencies. For this post, we chatted with Bill Laughman from DOJ’s Civil Rights Division about his experience as a product owner on Civil Rights reporting portal.
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Why simplicity? Choosing a web architecture
on April 5, 2021
If you have ever led or managed a web project, you know that coordinating a team of software engineers is hard work! We hope this blog post can help you understand the concepts behind choosing a web application architecture, so that you can steer your software towards simplicity — even if you don’t have direct software engineering experience.
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The Key Role of Product Owners in Federated Data Projects
on November 24, 2020
Dedicated product owners — meaning those that are empowered, well-resourced, and committed to developing cross-agency projects on a permanent basis — can bridge disparate resources and help federated data projects succeed.
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Continuous learning for product managers
on March 24, 2020
As product managers, we never stop learning because products never stop evolving and changing. You need to quickly get up to speed on a product’s technical implementation, design, user research, and business needs.
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Becoming a product manager
on November 21, 2019
If you had asked me two years ago what a product manager is, I wouldn’t have known. And, yet, today, that is one of my titles. Along the way, I have been lucky to receive guidance and coaching from experienced product managers at the General Services Administration’s 18F.
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Building product management capacity in government part 2 – Interview with a product manager
on November 19, 2019
This is part two in a series of posts about building product management capacity in government agencies. For this post, we chatted with Jerome Lee of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services about his experience as a product manager on our current project
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Building product management capacity in government part 1 – Our coaching philosophy
on August 22, 2019
This is the kick-off post in a series about building product management capacity in government agencies. The series explores the process of helping agency staff transition into product management roles, from both an 18F and partner agency perspective
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Product management at 18F, part 4 - 10x
on February 14, 2019
10x projects let anyone in government pitch an idea that could have a massive impact on the public. So how does 10x go about developing these ideas? Each pitch requires a lead investigator who will need to develop an understanding of the idea and make recommendations. Although it’s not limited to product managers, the tools of product management can come in handy when creating a process to determine if the idea is worth pursuing.
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Product management at 18F, part 3 - Products and Platforms
on December 20, 2018
While our consulting work serves the needs of a particular customer, managing one of our products means we are responsible for a shared service used by many of our partners. Managing one of the products and platforms means thinking beyond any individual customer. This work requires that we constantly evaluate market needs, ensure the product matches those needs, and support the business side of product management.
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Product management at 18F, part 2 - Acquisitions
on December 11, 2018
In the previous post, we wrote about how product management works in Path Analysis and Experiment & Iterate phases. In this post, we’ll discuss how 18F product managers support our partner agencies who are procuring the services of industry contractors to help achieve their mission.
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Product management at 18F, part 1 - New engagements
on December 4, 2018
At 18F, we partner with federal agencies to improve the user experience of government. We bring our product management skills to bear during these engagements to build digital services in line with our partners’ missions. When working with an agency, identifying the right problem focus on is often the first challenge. That’s why we have Path Analyses (PA): short engagements to survey the landscape and align everyone on a path forward.
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Ask 18F — Can you share any tips or suggestions on how to shift the cultural mindset of my organization?
on June 14, 2018
Ask 18F is an advice column that answers questions sent in by federal employees. In this edition, we’ll talk about how to shift the cultural mindset in an organization from traditional business intelligence to more predictive solutions.
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So, you’re a Product Owner...
on April 17, 2018
At 18F, a primary goal we have when working with agency partners to build or buy great digital products is to make sure the agency partner has full ownership over the product and its outcomes by the time we leave the project. One of the ways we build this sense of ownership is by identifying a Product Owner early on.
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A day in the life of an 18F product owner
on September 18, 2017
The Technology Transformation Services (TTS) has been working with the Forest Service in an effort to move their permitting process online. We’ve previously written about how doing this work in the open can benefit other agencies with permit systems. In this post, we’ll focus on why it’s important to have a product owner, what that looks like from the Forest Service’s perspective, and why a product owner is critical to successful projects.
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The life-changing magic of writing release notes
on January 17, 2017
A key part of agile development is constantly shipping new features. With so many changes happening to the product, it can be hard to keep track of how the product is growing and improving. Release notes help keep everyone on the team in the know about what’s shipping, give a clear list of features to check, and help always frame our work in terms of the value it delivers to users.
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The best way to build big is to start small
on January 11, 2017
Large software systems are hard, and in government we're tasked with building large systems to manage complex benefits and processes. Often those mandates arrive on the back of a failing legacy system. An agile workflow has the benefit of allowing us to try out our ideas before committing to years of time and money.
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