Transforming work, conversations and culture with Kanban at Stockport Council
The Situation
- Providing services to 291,775 residents
- Central Government funding decreasing by 60% from 2010 – 2020
- 87% of residents already online and have a 24/7 expectation
- Committed to modernising how residents access council services
- Realisation that delivery practices must change to achieve this
- In late 2015 the council stood up #DigitalStockport and the Digital By Design transformation programme tasked with delivery of a new digital platform and set of re-usable tech capabilities.
- The programme focused on the council’s internal software development and delivery staff, introducing them to the Scrum framework in order to redesign service fit for the future.
- By mid 2016 it became apparent that IT Application, Operations and Support were struggling to keep up with the performance increases in Digital by Design, and this was negatively impacting both.
- Heads of Council Services not satisfied with performance and responsiveness of IT
- IT criticised for focusing on “keeping the lights on” and not delivering improvement or increasing service capability
- IT seen as uncollaborative and lacking transparency
- Both IT and Council Services see each other as a source of overwhelming demand.
- IT unable to effectively articulate current performance
The Task
- Increase understanding of backlog; sources, types and magnitude of demand
- Increase transparency and encourage collaboration between the “Business” (commonnly known as Services) and IT
- Help generate shared purpose and ownership of the work
- Reduce lead times and increase responsiveness
- Improve morale despite pressure to deliver more!
- Reduce operating cost
The Action / Approach
- Treat each team individually
- Full day introduction to Kanban through theory lessons and immersive simulation games
- Two week coaching schedule per team
- Understand the nature of the team’s work
- Sources of internal and external dissatisfaction
- Analyse demand
- Analyse delivery capability
- identify classes of service, prioritisiation, urgency, impact
- Agree to evolutionary improvement
- Agree workflow design & policies
- Instigate ceremonies and cadences. feedback loops
The Result
Operations Teams
- Lead Time dramatically reduced
- Throughput Increased
- Customer satisfaction, and response to CSAT at their highest levels and climbing
- The teams feel more aligned across all of IT
- More collaboration with stakeholders in front of visualisations
Digital Teams
- Lead Time dramatically reduced
- Throughput Increased
- Collaboration with “Business” is more frequent, as understanding has increased
- The whole organisation knows about the “Big Wall”
- Award winning delivery
Results outside of IT in “upstream” services
- Town Planning – Stockport Spatial Plan delivered in record time
- Community Funding & Volunteering experiments run and passed by the Council Members
- New Social care systems put in place
- GDPR implemented seamlessly
“Our Digital by Design programme is at the heart of the council, helping to transform how people work, their conversations and culture. Drawing on Kanban and other visual and agile tools, the programme has had an impact far beyond the IT service. It has changed how we are developing our local plan, how we designed our community investment model and even how we safeguard children. Along the way, we have supported people into new careers, to learn new skills and show untapped talents.”
Pam Smith, CEO, Stockport Council
