{"id":916,"date":"2022-05-26T17:58:45","date_gmt":"2022-05-26T16:58:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.dorsetcouncil.gov.uk\/digital-first\/?p=916"},"modified":"2022-07-11T16:35:37","modified_gmt":"2022-07-11T15:35:37","slug":"developing-our-website","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.dorsetcouncil.gov.uk\/digital-first\/2022\/05\/26\/developing-our-website\/","title":{"rendered":"Developing our website"},"content":{"rendered":"

We\u2019ve written on this blog before about our approach to transforming our customer experience<\/a>. A key component of this has been the implementation of our new customer platform.<\/p>\n

The Digital Team was an early adopter of the customer platform for hosting our website, which involved a concentrated period of development, data migration, testing and deployment to take live. (not to mention a few sleepless nights!)<\/p>\n

We\u2019re now many months into \u2018business as usual\u2019 after its launch, but work goes on making improvements and developing new services.<\/p>\n

New microsite for Fostering<\/h2>\n

An early priority for us was to respond to a business need to help raise the profile of our Fostering service and create an attractive home for them on the web<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This was the second microsite development on our customer platform and was far quicker to launch as our developers were more up to speed with the customer platform; conception to prototype took just 3 weeks.<\/p>\n

A key principle we wanted to follow was reusing components already developed for the main website to save time and reduce our technical debt. This has proved to work both ways, as new components developed for the Fostering site can also be used on the main website. A great example of this is our timeline component<\/a> which provides an accessible process flowchart; we are looking to see if this can meet users needs for our Local Offer users.<\/p>\n

This was also our first time working with an external agency to supply the design concept. At first this felt challenging, but the end result looks terrific.<\/p>\n

\"Home<\/a><\/p>\n

The project wasn\u2019t without its pain points, but we\u2019re now starting to develop our rhythm of how to work together; batching work into sprints and liaising with our internal clients to sign off aspects as we go.<\/p>\n

A product-based approach<\/h2>\n

So that\u2019s great for projects, where there\u2019s lots of focus and activity around delivery. How do we replicate that for ongoing development of the CMS?<\/p>\n

We\u2019re starting to move to a more product-based approach in Dorset to help create accountability, set standards and make key decisions.<\/p>\n

\"""\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Using technology layer themes we\u2019ve identified a series of Product Owners with their own portfolios. Mine is for the \u2018presentation and non-transactional services\u2019 layer, which lines up nicely with the website, but also with web applications that we use and new developments in the customer platform we want to make.<\/p>\n

Putting product ownership into action is proving to be an exciting way to work<\/p>\n

Creating a roadmap<\/h2>\n

After we\u2019d migrated the website to the customer platform, we found there were a growing number of things we needed to do to help make the site more successful. These included:<\/p>\n