Building Citizen Centric Tech Products inside the Government

Building Citizen Centric Tech Products inside the Government

• 1. Building Citizen Centric Technology Products in the Government Amit Ranjan

• 2. Presentation Flow ❖ My startup background - How I landed in the Government ❖ Stint at MeitY / NeGD - DigiLocker & OpenForge ❖ 10 Learnings building products inside Indian Govt ❖ Q & A

• 3.

• 4. 10 Lessons from Building Products inside the Indian Government

• 5. 1 Silicon Valley’s Secret Sauce lies at the Product - Technology Layer! Product / Design Layer Business Layer Technology Layer Users Engineers Product Managers, Designers, UX Researchers, Human-Computer Interaction Designers, Ethnographers Very High Level of Specialization & Sophistication

• 6. Building Great Products requires a Combination of Art & Science! Getting started from zero requires an instinctive / artistic flair… but scaling it massively requires a disciplined scientific approach 0 1 5 10 50 n Peter Thiel 2

• 7. Irrespective of whether you’re a • Startup • Corporate • Government 3 Today’s Users expect Whatsapp level simplicity & experience!

• 8. 4 Governments are good at Projects... but not necessarily Products!

• 9. 5 "If I had 6 hours to chop a tree, I’d spend the first 4 sharpening my axe" Library Racking / Filing System Source Code Repository & Version Control You can’t build high quality, modern software without high quality tools & processes!

• 10. A Source Code Repository & Version Control System forms the fundamental building block or foundation in any software company

• 11. 6 “Its very hard to envision the exact design or blueprint of the final product that’ll work best… nobody has that luxury in today’s fast changing world, whether in corporate, startups or governments” Build a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) – something that barely works & improve it iteratively

• 12. Build – Measure – Learn Iterative Loops in MVP MVP involves Rapid Prototyping, Iterative Development, Continuous User Feedback

• 13. Rationale for MVP: First Version of Product ≠ Perfect “If you are not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you’ve launched too late” – Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder

• 14. 7 “Design isn’t just how it looks, Design also is how it works” – Steve Jobs The Best Software Products have Integrated Stacks (Backend + Frontend)

• 15. Ideation & Research Product Definition & Specs Detailed Design & Mockups Prototyping & Software Development Testing, Deployment & Rollout Performance Metrics & User Feedback Continuous Iterative Improvements Product Team Technology Team Product Team Team Structure – Roles & Responsibilities

• 16. Parallel Labs – a Bangalore based UX firm volunteered to help improve DigiLocker!

• 17. Parallel Labs specializes in Human Centered Design Sprints….

• 18. 5 Day DigiLocker Design Sprint by Parallel Labs in Dec 2019….

• 19. Rapid prototyping….

• 20. Redesigned Product Flows….

• 21. Watch on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQypzi-e3ZA

• 22. What was the impact of the design sprint? ❖ Cleaner/logical UI design, app’s goals are clearer ❖ Streamlined internal navigational flows ❖ Significant jump in user signup rates ❖ Significant jump in Aadhaar API authentication rates ❖ DigiLocker team upskilling - “Teach a man to fish, and you've fed him for a lifetime"

• 23. 7 ❖ Requirements Documents are the “running blueprint” of the product ❖ They build team consensus and trust while invoking buy-in from all stake holders. Should be shared with all key managers ❖ PRD should include product scope & concept, market analysis, use cases, assumptions, feature list, workflows & user journeys, wireframes & mockups, personas, metrics, milestones, timelines ❖ TRD should include technical scope, API specs, architecture diagram, technology stack, database design, security architecture, network & cloud architecture, testing plan Product Requirement Document (PRD) & Technical Requirement Document (TRD) 86

• 24. 976 Daily Key Metrics Monitoring – “Pull Vs Push Psychology” (Using email lists for quick response, ownership & transparency)

• 25. 1076 Managing Teamwork, Productivity & Operational Cadence ❖ Daily Scrum Meetings b/w tech & product team members ❖ Deployments – Weekly for smaller features & biweekly/monthly for longer features. As OpenForge usage matured, shifted to daily deployments using continuous integration & continuous deployments ❖ Cross functional meetings for root cause analysis to improve on systemic failures ❖ Customer support function is critical – involve them in product feedback and new feature brainstorming ❖ Creating sense of urgency & ownership in team is key

• 26. https://twitter.com/amitranjan https://twitter.com/amitranjan http://in.linkedin.com/in/amitranjanprofile http://in.linkedin.com/in/amitranjanprofile Thank You

• 27. References ❖ https://www.parallelhq.com/case-studies/digilocker ❖ https://twitter.com/shawaqiii/status/1383360530153230340 ❖ https://www.amazon.in/Zero-One-Start-Build-Future/dp/0753555190/ref=sr_1_1 ❖ https://www.c-sharpcorner.com/article/what-is-version-control-git-vs-tfs/ ❖ https://syntech.software/en/blog/what-minimum-viable-product-mvp-and-why-do-we-recommend-starting/