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Re-addressing the challenges to children’s allergy healthcare with ...
September 14, 2016
I spent Monday afternoon visiting the Health Foundry healthcare startup space to expand my horizons on what steps are being taken within service transformation in the NHS. The Health Foundry is a brand new collaborative workspace for people usi...
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Shaking up early product development, part 2: The Minimum Viable Pr...
May 4, 2016
An MVP is a Minimum Viable Product. This is the smallest possible thing that delivers value and you can learn from. Your MVP can usually be thought of as your initial product; the first thing you try to sell to your customer. But your MVP can help...
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Shaking up early product development, part 1: Using journey mapping...
April 27, 2016
We’re all trying to create a product or service that is valuable to our users. So it’s important to remember that the only people who can really think like our users are our users. Looking at our product or service through the eyes of our us...
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Spanning the rift: Beginning your first agile project in a waterfal...
April 21, 2016
One of the first mistakes you could make is thinking that the transition from waterfall to agile as being simply a process change – a change from one set of processes and practices to another. It’s much more about your culture and behaviour. In t...
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4 reasons why it’s wise to bring your developers along to business ...
April 14, 2016
Traditionally, the waterfall process excludes developers from being involved in “non-development” meetings. This is for a number of reasons. Primarily it was seen as “not a developer’s responsibility”, where business analysts/lead designers/...
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Event: Digitalising Local Government Services
March 18, 2016
With ongoing spending cuts and budgets getting tighter and tighter, it’s becoming more costly for local councils to maintain their services as they currently work. Shifting these services to digital reduces running costs, increases accessibility a...
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Guest post: Learning in Local Government - Part 2
January 18, 2016
Following on from part one in our ‘Learning in Local Government through Discovery’ series, part two is a guest post by Helen Gracie, a Business Improvement Advisor for Buckinghamshire County Council. We’re currently working alongside B...
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Learning in Local Government through Discovery
January 11, 2016
There’s a lot of content available online about doing agile with local councils - talks, conferences, case studies, white papers, etc. A lot of content guiding us to knowing what this should look like. But what does this really look like in practi...
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Event: The £50k Springboard
December 7, 2015
How to use the first £50k of a digital product to build the business case for the next £500k You’ve been given the first initial budget for a new digital product idea (or to overhaul an existing one). That digital product is going to be the one t...
Product Management versus Product Ownership
October 12, 2015

We talk a lot about ownership at Unboxed. We feel it really encapsulates the combination of empowerment and responsibility that makes people effective and happy. So how does this work in a product team with both a Product Owner and a Product Manag...

Agile pon de Beach 2015 - #AgileOTB
September 9, 2015

The conference: Agile On The Beach 2015 The dates: Thursday 2nd & Friday 3rd September The attendees: Claire, Jack, Martyn, Ben and Graeme (+200 others, but we don’t have caricatures for them) 2 days. 50 speakers. 40 sessions. 1 beac...

Planting the seeds for successful KPI trees
August 20, 2015

KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) and KPI trees were at the root of Wednesday’s Masterclass, hosted by Richard Stobart. A blend of senior digital stakeholders, product owners and digital creatives attended this one-off session to explore the answ...

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What is the definition of ‘done’?
August 4, 2015
If you’re breaking your project up into features, then make sure you define what ‘done’ means for a feature. Consider ‘done’ in terms of: Functionally Operationally Being able to be tested automatically Automated deployments Features need t...
Why should you have a zero-defect strategy?
July 28, 2015

Part of the logic of a zero-defect strategy is about psychology: specifically, the psychology of the developer working on code that they know is flawed. The other part of it is just good business practice… We’ve all heard many times that t...

Are you managing the right risks?
July 13, 2015

I was talking to a very good Project Manager the other day. We were talking about the risks that a Project Manager manages in the delivery of software. In a traditional project, the risks managed are often not actually the biggest risks that proj...

Why a UX-er and a Developer trumps System and Business Analysts
July 6, 2015

An empowered Product Owner (who cares passionately about their product) coupled with a UXer (a User Experience designer) and a full-stack developer (who can knock up some prototypes very quickly) trumps a couple of system analysts and business ana...

Webinar: Speed up problem and customer validation
July 2, 2015

Martyn Evans hosted the second in our SpeedAgile webinar series: Speed up problem and customer validation. In this session, Martyn explored how to unlock development by quickly and deeply understand: 1. The real problem that your digital product ...

10 things that make a great Product Owner
July 1, 2015

A good Product Owner is key in success, making a huge difference in terms of drive and enthusiasm. Here (in no particular order) we’ve pulled out 10 attributes believed to make a great Product Owner (with much insight provided by Alan). ...

Webinar: Speed up stakeholder communication and sign off
June 25, 2015

Richard Stobart kicked off our SpeedAgile webinar series, with the first session: ‘Speed up stakeholder communication and sign off’. In this 30-minute webinar, Richard explored: Rapidly engaging and building confidence with your stakeholders Cr...

How does the Product Owner role change everything in software deliv...
June 22, 2015

I was having a conversation with one of our Agile coaches, who has a long history of project management delivery. We were discussing: Who owns the successful delivery of value of the features in a traditional project approach? I think the ans...

Feature-based Benefits
June 15, 2015

Imagine you have several projects, which you’re trying to get a delivery team to deliver. Those projects are really important and there is a lot to be delivered, but they are also competing with each other for scarce resources. Typically, in a tr...

The Sausage Machine
June 4, 2015

We often talk about “the most important thing for a delivery team to do is…” and “what a delivery team manager should focus on is…”. Let’s get clear on who is responsible for what. If you imagine you’re trying to deliver high value, high q...

10 Attributes that make a great product owner
May 29, 2015

I’ve been working for Unboxed Consulting since 2008 on a large number of projects and over the years I have worked with quite a few different Product Owners. Some have been great, others not so good. On a recent project I worked on, I was lucky e...

Roundtable: Leading the transition to Agile in established media co...
May 21, 2015

10 attendees (see who attended) 3 lightning talks 4 discussions Wednesday 20th May saw us pull up a chair to our first media roundtable discussion session. From publishers to TV and from music to education, traditional media companies have cha...

Unstick your digital products
May 12, 2015

Stalled products in your product portfolio, a situation which is ultimately frustrating. So how do you rapidly progress these products through the pipeline, and towards the glowing light at the other end? Following on from our #StuckPipeline even...

Event: Kicking the cobwebs out of your stuck digital product pipeline
March 30, 2015

Four insightful speakers and a fantastic audience – Wednesday 25th March was our ‘Unstick your digital products’ event, in Central London. This energetic three-hour session was attended by heads of industry and explored the techniques to: • Acce...

Webinar: Offshoring Agile: Make it work in practice
March 19, 2015

Carlo Kruger hosted the final webinar in the #StrongerAgile series, titled ‘Offshoring Agile: Make it work in practice’, live from our Cape Town office. Despite the belief that Agile can’t work offshore, this webinar explains how it can flourish w...

Webinar: Why & how to include developers in business & design meeti...
March 6, 2015

Andrew White hosted the third webinar in the #StrongerAgile series, titled ‘Take developers up the foodchain: Why and how to include developers in business and design meetings for better ideation’. The full audio of the session: Topics covere...

Webinar: Spanning the rift - Advice for waterfall organisations run...
March 2, 2015

Steve Lennon hosted the next webinar in the #StrongerAgile series, titled ‘Spanning the rift: Advice for waterfall organisations running Agile projects’. The full audio of the session: Topics covered included: • The role of culture and beha...

Roundtable: Digital Healthcare
February 26, 2015

Wednesday 18th February saw the Digital Healthcare Roundtable Session take place at Unboxed Consulting. The session brought together a handpicked and diverse group of healthcare experts and leaders, with the aim to start a revolution in digita...