:red_circle: Product List

[lkoenigsberg]

What Develop, and manage, a single source of truth for all OCTO products and ensure all products have an associated product outline.

Why We don’t have a canonical, up-to-date list of of our products. Why does that matter? The easy reason is that it’s good hygiene; a product organization—e.g. OCTO-DE—needs a clear and shared sense of its portfolio for new and existing teams to reference. Sometimes it’s important to simply “see” something. The deeper reason is if we don’t have that shared sense of what’s in our portfolio, we don’t know what we’re responsible for or what we’re stewards of. That’s necessary for compliance reasons—say OIG or the CTO or Leg Affairs asks who’s responsible for x product, we need an answer. If it’s not clear what we’re responsible for, we also don’t know if we’re prioritizing the most important needs for Veterans and VA. I could make a case that it doesn’t matter; we should just prioritize the most important initiatives e.g. PACT Act, Mission Act. But, the products are we deliver value to people. And if we don’t know the shape or bounds of that medium, then we can’t be effective. There are other downstream outputs of this exercise is a comprehensive roadmap, an exhaustive launch tracker, updated onboarding materials, other things I’m not thinking of.

Things to do

• [x] - Finalize definitions
• [x] - Meet with the Platform Crew to discuss the work they've been doing and being tracked here and here
• [x] - Update the list so that it maps to the new definitions by working with Product Owners, Crew Chiefs, and Portfolio Leads
• [ ] - Develop a method for keeping this updated and maintained
• [x] Meet with Zach to discuss Benefits Delivery products

[lkoenigsberg]

Platform Product List landing page

[dmkosko]

8/24 - Benefits Tools, Sitewide, Account Experience, and Mobile product discussions set. Still arranging Platform and Health meetings

[dmkosko]

8/31 - Met with Matt Self and Dave Conlon this week so far, updating notes on the product list. Meeting with Account Experience this week

[dmkosko]

9/7 - Hold off on scheduling a Platform product discussion until Lisa speaks with Chris

[dmkosko]

9/15 - Draft of the comms plan shared with the group

[dmkosko]

Arranging a meeting with Platform to discuss the VFS Directory and our product list. The VFS Directory has some components that we would like to include with our list so it makes sense to meet and discuss next steps.

[leahbannon2]

Next steps -- related discussion threaded in slack.

1. Make sure that the Product Directory can fulfill any features/use cases/fields which we had planned to use the spreadsheet version of the list for (or GitHub board or whatever the plan was for the spreadsheet). I’m not currently aware of any, except for tracking non-va.gov products.
2. Use our originally planned spreadsheet/GitHub board product list of all non-va.gov, non-platform products. Design a process by which this gets updated regularly.
3. Use the Product Directory as our primary product list for all va.gov products. Divide up the work of updating the Product Directory with any information or updates that we’ve collected in our product spreadsheet.
4. Once Platform restarts the Console project, they will use the Product Directory as a source for updating everything in Console before we all move over to using that as our primary list of products.

[leahbannon2]

Action items

• [x] Leah to review JSON > CSV export options of Product Directory -- here's the JSON file. A CSV file can be opened in excel. This is to ensure that if someone wanted to sort or filter the list, they could download a copy of the list in excel.
• [ ] Leah and Mickin to review diff doc for changes to Product Directory
• [x] Leah to reach out to Joe Tice from the QA team to ask about process for making updates to the Product Directory -- Fortunately, the github issue form for updating the directory automatically opens a pull request to the directory and then runs a validation script. So this mostly requires little work on Platform's side unless there are rare validation issues. Next steps: Compile our list of updates, give platform qa folks a heads up about the changes that are coming, make sure Mike and Ray are on board with prioritizing updates in case anything requires fixing, then make the updates.

Note: The QA team is ending soon and the Product Directory will be maintained by a general support team.

[lkoenigsberg]

Noticed there are no Benefits Delivery Portfolio products on the list - Virtual Regional Office (VRO) as an example. Add this to the task list.

[dmkosko]

Added products from the Product Directory to our spreadsheet to compare the two lists

Added in forms that are associated with products (need a second set of eyes to review)

[dmkosko]

Updated Product List shared. There are a few blanks/question marks in the "Crew" column as I could not find info from GitHub or the Product Directory.

[dmkosko]

Added Platform's items last week, looking for Ray to confirm/edit

[dmkosko]

• [x] Lisa and Dan to review Health products on our spreadsheet and reassess/confirm if they are correctly labeled as a product, feature, initiative as well as if there is a Product Lead assigned with a due date of December 2nd
• [x] _Joe Tice and Peter Hill helped create the VFS Directory site – they would have knowledge on adding/updating products. Ray and Jason to coordinate a technical evaluation of what the process is for adding non VA.gov products to the list would look like by December 16th (See below for explanation) Regarding this item, since they are non-VA.gov products they would obviously not go through the collab process. We've identified the minimum information needed for any product so there would need to be that plus a field to list "VA.gov" or "non". Aside from the field information, there was also a discussion about access/updates. To maintain a list, there would need to be some reminder/notification at a certain frequency (monthly, quarterly, etc.). That could be achieved through a Slack/Google Form reminder to the identified Product Leads. It would be a low level of effort, just ensuring they're all in a channel and included in the reminder message when it goes out. Now, there's the possibility that someone forgets, but it's low LoE for what we're asking them to do. The only concern there is access. Do we want to be giving dozens and dozens of people access to a Platform system/site? If we don't then I would consider a point of contact or two being that person(s) that facilitates the updates and makes them on the Directory. Two strong options here, just a matter of a little more conversation about WHO we want handling any potential changes for non-VA.gov products.
• [X] Mickin to assist in determining leads for DE products. If there are questions, we will need to loop in Crew Chiefs. After that exercise, we will need to look into “deduping” our product spreadsheet and then submit to Platform if the VFS Directory is going to be the one source of truth. Complete by November 17th.
• [x] Dan to collect the outstanding items by crew and clean up any notes if the question/task was completed
• [x] Ray to finish the Platform items by November 18th and even added some features to our spreadsheet. Making sure there is a lead named for each thing.

[dmkosko]

Dan reaching out to Product Leads to add Product Outline links to our spreadsheet.

[dmkosko]

Ticket submitted to have our product definitions added to the VFS Directory for awareness (Our GitHub link will be added).

[dmkosko]

Lauren added in Product Leads to any Health items and the leads will update their items before December 2nd. Zach's items are updated. Reached out to Chante and Matt regarding their items (waiting to hear back) Reaching out to Dave today

[dmkosko]

Platform items updated Remaining Crews are Account Experience, Sitewide and Benefit Tools. Matt and I have exchanged messages back and forth, just waiting on his last set of answers. For Sitewide, Dave had questions about why/how some items were listed as products when nobody from Platform ever reached out to him for questions. I worked with Joe Tice to get Dave more info and I'm just waiting on him to see how he feels about some of the items in our list (He is out sick today, but plan on reaching out tomorrow if he is back online).

@lkoenigsberg I need some assistance with Account Experience, I reached out to Chante a few times and didn't get a response. There's only three products I can't find any outline information on (Medallia, MyVA 411 Voicebot, and Performance Dashboard).

There are a couple outstanding items noted above, but we are very close to getting this wrapped up.

[dmkosko]

Account Experience: draft product outline for MyVA 411 Voicebot will be available early next week (otherwise Account Experience is complete) Benefit Tools: finalized remaining items with Matt, now complete Sitewide: confirming with Dave if Benefit Hub and Content Hub should be considered products

[dmkosko]

MyVA 411 Voicebot ppt product outlione available, Luciana working on converting it to GitHub Sitewide - asked Dave for updates on Benefit Hub and Content Hub by COB today (12/12)

[dmkosko]

• [x] Dan to add a column in our spreadsheet to sort VA.gov vs. Non-VA.gov products by December 19th
• [x] Dan to work with Jason on seeing what we can do to update the minimum required information on the VFS Directory to include a link to the product outline, crew responsible for the work, and the Product Lead by January 6th, 2023
• [x] Dan and Jason will determine how the fields are structured and see if there’s a way to have them reordered by January 6th
• [x] Lisa would like to know if there’s the potential for the VFS Product Directory to be filtered by Crew, Owner, etc? Dan to work with Jason to determine by January 6th, 2023
• [x] Lisa to write up who the audience is for the VFS Product Directory and how this list is used by the teams by January 6th, 2023
• [x] Jason to provide details decision-making process for a product vs. Not during the collab cycle by January 6th, 2023
• [x] Dan to propose next steps to Jason on best way to go about the cleanup (I.e. should there be some type of “archive” folder to track any items we move from products to not, and would it be beneficial for a comm to be present in office hours?) by January 9th, 2023
• [x] Dan to identify what items will be coming off the VFS Product Directory which will assist in creating the communication by January 20th, 2023 (after Joe Tice meeting)
• [x] Dan and Jason to find the gaps and clean up the current VFS Product Directory to ensure it matches with our excel spreadsheet by January 20th, 2023 (after Joe Tice meeting)

[dmkosko]

One of the items discussed is to provide Platform a communication about updating the VFS Product Directory to ensure it matches our excel list. A link to the comm is here and will be reviewed next week

[dmkosko]

Decision making process for product vs. not below

https://dsva.slack.com/archives/C03H546LHDY/p1672870149669939?thread_ts=1672867800.880709&cid=C03H546LHDY

[dmkosko]

Regarding the in-progress action items:

Justification for reordering fields and creating a new view on the VFS Directory: link to response here Communication to Platform Collab Cycle: Waiting on feedback from Jason and will share with Mickin once he's back from being OOO. I spoke to Shira and it may be beneficial if an additional educational form was created to provide more insight into the collab cycle for any future product requestors. Dan will add this as a separate item to our board. Next week we will tackle the process to remove items from the VFS Directory that are no longer needed

[dmkosko]

Sent Mickin the communication for the Platform collab cycle - waiting on feedback Connected with Shira to add the product definitions to additional pages in the collab cycle. Link to the ticket is here In the progress of scheduling a meeting with this group and Joe Tice to discuss the changes to the VFS Product Directory

[dmkosko]

EOW updates:

Sent Mickin the communication for the Platform team - waiting on feedback Justification about VFS Directory changes – needs to be reviewed by Mickin Reordering/Sorting/Removal – Holding off on applying any changes until we meet with Joe T on Jan 18th

[dmkosko]

Communication for the Platform team - ready to send, just need to double check with Lisa (asked Jason about the best channel or way to make the product-related teams in Platform aware of the work we're doing. Waiting to hear back) Justification about VFS Directory changes - provided additional feedback to Mickin and we're good to proceed Reordering/Sorting/Removal - link to meeting minutes will follow

[dmkosko]

Meeting with Jason Woodward today to discuss who the Platform comm should be sent to. Link to the VFS Directory reordering/sorting/removal initiatives is here

[dmkosko]

Communication to Platform team individuals that work with product sent on 1/26. Mentioned to the group that the purpose is for awareness of the changes we're proposing. The only action is to disseminate to their team members who interact with any areas in this space.

[dmkosko]

• [x] Dan to go through the product list and determine the last time the outlines have been updated. If they have not been updated recently (~12 months), reach out to the Product Lead and discuss when it can be. Our criteria was reasons to be updated are: does the product outline reflect the current state of the product, has any new research been conducted since the last time it was updated, have any releases occurred, are there any new/updates to metrics/analytics/KPIs, and is there anything that happened recently that warrants an update (change of product mgmt team, foresee/unforeseen risks, launch strategy, or problem statement.)

• [x] Due by 2/7 COB, send Lisa the numbers on the # of products in our list, % that have outlines, and of that percentage, how many have been updated in the last 12 months (or another timeframe if it makes sense)

[dmkosko]

For the top task, I am going to hold off on reaching out until Lisa presents the information on the product list / outline metrics on the monthly CoP call. I am working on the criteria by which we're asking Product Leads to update their outlines so that way there is a standardized discussion on why/when an outline should be updated.

[dmkosko]

Metrics presented to Charles and others on products

• There are 106 products on our spreadsheet, 95 associated with VA.gov, 11 non-VA.gov
• 92% (98/106) of products DO have some type of outline, could be in GitHub or Confluence (all 11 non-VA.gov products do have an outline, thought it was good to mention that)
• Only 50 of the 98 product outlines (51%) have been updated since February 1, 2022

[dmkosko]

Product Outline updates can be found here

[dmkosko]

Met with Joe Tice earlier today to discuss the process to have the VFS Product Directory match our excel product list. He will need to do some digging and research to determine the best course of action for removals/additions (and loop in Product Leads and Shira G.). Joe will create tickets and send them over. The biggest question is, what to do with the products that will be removed and where should they live for historical purposes?

[dmkosko]

Anne Kerr and I recently met with Dave Conlon (new Platform CC) about the bottleneck of updates to the VFS Product Directory. He is going to loop us in on a meeting with Clint Little and train us on how the process works so we can take them over going forward.