Align on Experimental Design process, flow and definitions

[shiragoodman]

User Story

As a Governance team member who is responsible for recommending Experimental Design to VFS teams in the Collaboration Cycle, I want to have better clarify on when Experimental Design should be recommended so that I am giving teams proper guidance and not asking them to do more than necessary.

Assignee: @allison0034 Peer Reviewer: @KKitagawa-Bosch

Description

Earlier this year, Governance team drafted a new flow for Experimental Design to help Governance and VFS teams determine when the experimental design process is needed. We had planned to publish the flow to the VADS per ticket #85474, however additional concerns about the flow were raised by @humancompanion-usds. Governance assumes that the disconnect on what experimental design is, how it's recommended and what process VFS teams follow is due to unclear documentation and guidance.

The purpose of this ticket is to align on Experimental Design including:

• what is the Experimental Design process?
• when would the Experimental Design process be recommended to a VFS team for a new design?
• how to we determine if the new design should be added to the VADS?
• how can we capture all of the variations of the new design if they're NOT added to the VADS?
• what is the process the Design System Council (DSC) follows for approving a new design?

Once Governance, DST and OCTO are aligned on the above, we will make any necessary changes to the flow chart, as well as creating a legend/key with definitions of common terms. Governance also assumes that the disconnect on the process is also due to a lack of controlled vocabulary. VFS teams often incorrectly assume that "Experimental Design" refers to the research process AND the process for adding to the VADS.

Impacted Artifacts

Live pages

• Mural

Drafted pages

Tasks

• [x] Meet with Matt, DST, Naomi and Governance team members on 8/29 to align on Experimental Design
• [ ] Update Mural
  • Add new flow for things that are new but do not need to go thru experimental design
  • Update current experimental design
  • Update decision tree
• [ ] Review current Governance team documentation docs to see if the new flows have any impact
• [ ] Reach out to Matt Dingee for his feedback

Peer Review

To be completed by peer reviewer

• [ ] User story and acceptance criteria are met

Acceptance Criteria

• [ ] We are in alignment across Platform and OCTO-DE with what the Experimental Design process is.
• [ ] We have agreed upon an updated flow for recommending Experimental Design
• [ ] We have agreed upon definitions of Experimental Design and other common terms

Team Notification

• [ ] Slack post on #platform-governance-team
• [ ] Presentation at Weekly Initiative Meeting
• [x] No notification needed

How to prepare this issue

Refinement

• [x] Ticket has user story, description, tasks, and acceptance criteria
• [x] Ticket has been sized
• [x] Once all above items are checked, add the 'Ready' label.

  Planning

  If this ticket is picked up from the Backlog mid-sprint, connect with Shira to ensure the below items are completed correctly

• [ ] Ticket has been discussed as a team at Planning
• [x] Ticket has been assigned to appropriate initiative or quarterly epic
• [x] Ticket has been assigned to a Sprint
• [x] Ticket has been moved to the Planned pipeline in the Governance team board
• [x] Ticket as an assignee and peer reviewer

[allison0034]

Met with the team and updated tasks.

[allison0034]

This will move into the next sprint. My priorities were moved to an MVP for the new po sync