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3. Interested Parties Involved

Jack Sam edited this page Oct 24, 2023 · 88 revisions

Discovery interviews

Updated Oct 23, 2023

Process

Team Silva conducted a series of discovery interviews to get feedback from a diverse cross section of RESULTS users in order to collaboratively build RESULTS' replacement: SILVA.

We interviewed 74 people during 43 sessions from February to July 2023. The initial group of participants were identified by Team Silvaโ€™s Product Owner, Caroline Wood (and previously The Ministry of Forests' Silviculture Systems Specialist). Some of these participants gave us recommendations for additional interview candidates and we interviewed them as well.
๐Ÿ”— See below for the list of participants

We asked participants about their pain points ๐Ÿค• with RESULTS and what they hoped for ๐Ÿ™ in SILVA.
๐Ÿ”— Click here for a sample of our questions

We stopped the discovery interview series when we felt we were hearing mostly repeat responses. We felt ready to analyze the responses and prepare for future collaborative activities.

Note: These interviews were NOT intended for collecting finalized business requirements from all interested parties and business areas. Team Silva is a Scrum team working in an Agile way. Agile does not necessarily mean delivering an application faster; Agile means being set up to change direction along the way. We work in an iterative fashion, so that we change according to our users' continuous input, in order to ensure we deliver digital services that meet our users' needs.


What we heard

Introduction

This document is written in a linear way to help readers easily digest 74 people's worth of interviews. This document does not represent the full spectrum of every participant's business opinions.

We formatted this document with 4 kinds of categories that are accented by emojis to help readers pick and choose what they want to read:

  • ๐Ÿค• Pain points about RESULTS that we heard and summarized
  • ๐Ÿ™ What participants hope to see in SILVA that we heard and summarized
  • ๐Ÿ”— Links to notes we took during participant's interviews that were categorized
  • "Quotes from participants to show more authentic examples of what we heard." - Type of participant
    Note: The quotes were selected at the discretion of Team Silva but we do not guarantee the accuracy of these participants' business opinions.

The original design of RESULTS limits future growth

๐Ÿค• RESULTS was designed to track reforestation obligations and is not equipped to handle the growing need to report silviculture activities associated with land use objectives other than timber.

โ€œThe original focus of RESULTS was basically to capture silviculture survey information, right? Just to to pass that criteria. And it's been hampered by that ever since it was designed because everything that's been happening to it since 1987 has basically been stapled on.โ€ - Business Area

๐Ÿค• Silviculture business and policy people have a difficult time getting technical changes implemented by RESULTS developers.

โ€œItโ€™s really frustrating to keep having that same conversation with the next DBA [database architect] about what RESULTS is, why this is important, and that shouldnโ€™t be questioned every time. Just come on! Make the change! Weโ€™re the business! We drive the application!โ€ - Business Area

๐Ÿ™ Users need SILVA to be able to adapt to ongoing business changes while retaining the history of past requirements.

โ€œI think that the Free Growing framework does need to change because it does not align with managing for other values because it's solely focused on a timber objective and government wants to move beyond that ... I think that as long as we have space within the system that allows us to make these ongoing changes through maintenance, weโ€™ll be fine.โ€ - Business Area

"Take what's working and then improve upon it with a responsiveness to current user needs and business areas. But also, you don't wanna lose the institutional history that is housed within the data. You don't want to make your older data inaccessible with the system change." - Business Area

๐Ÿ”— Click here to see more responses about Flexibility to change data capture


๐Ÿค• RESULTS required spatial data submissions but did not provide tools to create or upload spatial data.

โ€œThe requirement to submit spatial data requires generally third party software: eziLink, some type of GIS stuff. Technology the average Woodlot guy doesn't have, right? So even if they can figure out RESULTS, they hit a point where they just can't complete those submissions anymore without buying eziLink or knowing computer code, right?โ€ - Woodlot Licensee

๐Ÿ™ SILVA needs to support users (who don't have third-party applications) with all the necessary functionalities, including spatial data creation, to submit silviculture activities.

"Thereโ€™s a 20 meter spatial error you're allowed and there's a lot of things that happen, you know, and if people on the ground could be correcting that as they go along, that would be really good. But you need to have that spatial overlay on, you know, on the imagery to do that." - Woodlot Licensee

"We go well beyond what gets managed in RESULTS and we have costing data and budgets and all sorts of stuff being managed in our system and we're only passing a very, very small portion of it over to RESULTS." - Major Licensee

๐Ÿ”— Click here to see more responses about ESF / Lack of mapping capabilities
๐Ÿ”— Click here to see more responses about Forest Cover is delete & replace
๐Ÿ”— Click here to see more responses about Stocking standards


RESULTS' online interface doesn't help people submit activities

๐Ÿค• RESULTS contains fields for data entry but does not offer much help to explain what data is required for a given activity.

โ€œThere's so many options and things you can do in there that to try to go in and do one little thing can often be a little, I don't know, overwhelming like I say. โ€ฆ You really do have to sort of know what you're doing, and you have to know what you want to enter.โ€ - Woodlot Licensee

๐Ÿค• There is very limited support staff for RESULTS and data integrity issues that ensue are costly to manage

"The service desk staff [of 8 FTEs] are fielding calls from 500 different applications and someone will call in with a RESULTS question. They don't have a forestry background, so you know, it's good to give them some basic RESULTS training just so they're prepared for calls that come into the service desk." - Front End Support

"It just affects the quality of the data that I give to people. So it if it means that some data is missing, if it means that some data is just flat out wrong, it means that people are just not getting the answers, the best answer that they could possibly get to answer their question about a certain policy or practice." - Business Area

๐Ÿค• RESULTS documentation and silviculture submission requirements are comprehensive but difficult to get right for new or infrequent users.

"I'll learn off the YouTube, but I need access to RESULTS and I can't get access to RESULTS until I write the access test. ... It's hard to understand the training without being in there, but you can't be in there without the training." - Major Licensee

โ€œI've been using this 20 years. I don't have a problem with it. And I've been trying to train new people as they come on board to, how to use it and what it's going to do and the functionality behind it, butโ€ฆ I don't know, maybe it just looks intimidating or something. People are scared to go in there.โ€ - Consultant

"I think RESULTS is probably the most complex system there is just because of the legislation that's tied to it and all the different aspects of silviculture and code and all that kind of stuff." - Front End Support

๐Ÿ™ Design SILVA with an intuitive workflow and just-in-time help to guide users to fulfill their specific submission requirements.

โ€œServe up all the pieces I need to do the work in that one tool and make it easy for me, right? So depending on who I am, what role I play. I want to make sure that it's very intuitive, so I know what I need to do.โ€ - Business Area

"Wizard: It's like doing your taxes. You click your little wizard guy and it says, what income did you have? And you fill in all the boxes and then you make sure that it tells you all the boxes you have to fill in. And if you don't fill in one of those boxes, it tells you off. You're like, OK, next step. Now what?" - Frontend Support

"There are some places where you can look up some of those codes, but I don't believe there's anything comprehensive and I don't know of anything actually in the RESULTS program. Because there are some things I've tried to look up and I have to stretch to do that." - Woodlot Licensee

๐Ÿ”— Click here to see more responses about User experience & interface
๐Ÿ”— Click here to see more responses about Access management
๐Ÿ”— Click here to see more responses about Documentation & errors
๐Ÿ”— Click here to see more responses about Support staff
๐Ÿ”— Click here to see more responses about Data integrity issues


Data Analysis and Planning from RESULTS is very difficult

๐Ÿค• JASPER has very limited ability to customize reports and requires a lot of post-processing to get desired data.

โ€œSo being able to report out simply and quickly would be important to me because I need to know something before somebody heads up to look at this block or I need to be able to zoom in on an area and see what the history is like. โ€ฆ And I know you can do that in a way, but you have to be GIS user to really use the power of that tool right now.โ€ - District Staff

โ€œReports in RESULTS would be ideal, because then you gotta go to Jasper and you gotta pull like all those reports and Jasper's not handy. Like it's not as user friendly as an end user. I know it's a little easier for the government to pull their RESULTS. They have a little bit more capability as an end user, but it would be nice to be able to pull more reports out of RESULT. โ€ - Software Company

๐Ÿ™ Users want the ability to produce custom queries with select parametres and filters to get information about large areas of the province.

โ€œIf I asked you and said, hey, how hard do you think it would be to get a map of what was actually logged in the last three years? You would think you should be able to get that out of the government system, but you really can't.โ€ - Business Area

"So, like saying to you that, like, the attachments drive me mental that you have to like open up PDF's to look at maps or to look at reports, like, I don't know is that part of something that you could integrate in so that we don't always have to click on a PDF to open that that information is better?" - Business Area

๐Ÿ”— Click here to see more responses about JASPER / Reporting out


๐Ÿค• RESULTS' Planning Tool doesn't have a spatial view so it is difficult for multiple people or organizations to collaborate on overlapping project areas.

โ€œThere are mixups that happen from time to time and then it's usually like ohh we got more money than we were supposed to get. Well, why did that happen? Ohh well, the hectares didn't match. Ohh how, why didn't the hectares match? Ohh well, the shell opening got mixed up with another one, you know, so...โ€ - District Staff

๐Ÿ™ Enable users to easily see existing plans or projects across multiple organizations on a map so that they can prioritize their investments.

โ€œRun a report from RESULTS or see spatially in RESULTS. OK, what did people plan this year? Ohh, Holy Hannah, there's Wildfire Risk Reduction plan where they're planning to do reforestation. So over here, they're planning to thin. Here, they're planning to plant or prune. Or, you know, these two activities might not be complementary. So currently that kind of spatial planning piece is not that easily usable for me.โ€ - Business Area

๐Ÿ”— Click here to see more responses about Planning tool


Next steps

๐Ÿ™‹โ€โ™€๏ธ ๐Ÿ™‹ ๐Ÿ™‹โ€โ™‚๏ธ To sign up for ongoing collaboration opportunities with Team Silva, email [email protected].

๐Ÿ› ๏ธ ๐Ÿšง ๐Ÿ—๏ธ To follow along with Team Silva's progress, click here go to the Sprint Review Archive.


๐Ÿ™ Users need SILVA to be able to adapt to ongoing business changes while retaining the history of past requirements.

  • ๐Ÿ”Ž๐Ÿชก๐Ÿชขโ›“๏ธ๐Ÿ”ง Team Silva's developers will explore RESULTS' database to see how we can detangle it's linkages.

๐Ÿ™ Design SILVA with an intuitive workflow and just-in-time help to guide users to fulfill their specific submission requirements.

  • ๐Ÿ”Ž๐Ÿงฉโœ๏ธ๐Ÿ“ฑ๐Ÿ–ฅ๏ธ Team Silva's designers will begin investigating, prototyping and testing new screens.

๐Ÿ™ SILVA needs to support users (who don't have third-party applications) with all the necessary functionalities, including spatial data creation, to submit silviculture activities.

  • ๐Ÿ”Ž ๐Ÿงญ ๐Ÿ“ ๐Ÿ“ ๐Ÿ—บ๏ธ Team Silva and Team Evergreen (SPAR/CONCEP) will explore spatial tools that can be integrated into Forestry Digital Services' applications.

๐Ÿ™ Users want the ability to produce custom queries with select parametres and filters to get information about large areas of the province.

  • โธ๏ธ ๐Ÿ•ฐ๏ธ โŒš๏ธ โณ ๐Ÿ”ฎ Team Silva will hold off on this until we get a better sense of what is going to be in the new interface.

๐Ÿ™ Enable users to easily see existing plans or projects across multiple organizations on a map so that they can prioritize their investments.

  • ๐Ÿชต ๐ŸŒฑ ๐ŸŒฒ ๐ŸฆŒ ๐Ÿš’ Team Silva will investigate how program areas would like to collaborate in the future.



Participants

from February 2023 to July 2023
1. Scott Akerley 23. Rod Blake
2. Karen Stout 24. Western Canadian Timber Products (Mark Tressel & Tyler Schaap)
3. Tom Bradley 25. Interfor (Kelly McLeod & Jason Swanson)
4. Pamela Matute 26. Nyssa Temmel
5. Mei-Ching Tsoi 27. Wildfire Risk Reduction (Andrew Flockhart & Aaren Richie-Bonar)
6. Craig Wickland 28. Garrett McLaughlin
7. Christine Unghy 29. Brent Ziegler
8. DR Systems (Liz Brackenreed & Heidi Walsh) 30. Ray Thiessen & Shaun Clausen
9. Dan Turner 31. Susan Woermke & Brian Amies & Claude Schweizer
10. Lee-ann Puhallo 32. Barbara Happy
11. Alex Woods 33. Ellery Tetz
12. Carol Gjeterud 34. BCTS (Chris Runnals & Wendy Ward)
13. Chartwell (Eric Ortmayr & Codie Johnston & Julie Clarke & Lori Bartsch) 35. Aaron Benterud
14. Robbie Hember 36. Christiane Lenz
15. Matthew LeBourdais & Allison McAssey 37. FAIB (David Cromarty & Nicole Huser & Ed Deen)
16. Anya Dennill 38. Cam Brown
17. Forsite (Richelle Storla & Tristan Tyler & Chris Durnin) 39. Kerri Howse
18. Forest Health (Jeanne Robert & Jewel Yurkewich & Stefan Zeglen & David Rusch & Thomas Binsl &ย Debra Wytrykush) 40. Shelley Barlow
19. Coleen MacLean-Marlow 41. Marie Nestel
20. Mosaic (Alexandra Vallee & Jennifer Peschke & John Millar) 42. Tammy Baerg
21. Weyerhaeuser (Karen Brewer & Trenna MacLeod & Adam Campbell & Danielle Lavallee & Jason Carmichael & Robin Dack) 43. Derek Belsham
22. Western Forest Products (Chris Clements & Anna Flint & Joliene Atkinson & Kellie Dukes)

Observing the Openings process

Sep 2023

  1. Karen Stout
  2. Richelle Storla
  3. Anya Dennill
  4. Eric Ortmayr & Codie Johnston & Julie Clarke
  5. Scott Akerley
  6. Mei-Ching Tsoi