September 2024 Web Updates

Our first open web meeting went well. We reviewed our approach to product development and upcoming refinements. This includes improvements to the discovery process for identifying and creating new features for the NC State Web Platform. Key current and upcoming work for the rest of the year was also discussed.

Product Approach Refinements

The presentation we reviewed covers our refined product approach at a high level. Here are the main points:

Discovery and Delivery

We’ve always done both discovery (brainstorming) and delivery (design and coding), but we’re now making the distinction clearer. This will help everyone understand whether we’re in the strategic planning stage or actively implementing features.

Discovery has three phases:

1. Wonder: We explore new ideas to see if they’re worth pursuing. There are no bad ideas here—what seems small to one person might evolve into a major feature.
2. Explore: Promising ideas undergo critical review, with various solutions considered and tested.
3. Solidify: We choose a specific direction, document expectations, and prepare the idea for delivery by the development team in a future sprint.

Throughout discovery, rapid prototyping and frequent user feedback are key to ensure we’re solving the right problem.

Delivery

Delivery will happen in three-week sprints. A sprint may or may not result in an immediate release, depending on the roadmap. We aim to release updates to users every 1-3 months.

Discovery Backlog

We’re using Jira Product Discovery to track feature ideas, improvements, and bugs. This will be the authoritative source for what we’re working on. The discovery backlog is open to anyone in UComm, and new ideas can be submitted to increase transparency and encourage input from across the organization.