Modern Tools for Housing – Programme Week Notes 10/12/21
Ups and downs this week as the clock continues to run down to year-end. Our workstream updates.
Finance – Silvia – HackIT workstream DM
- Celebrations:
- Progress was made on the MAA Letters bug, which has now been fixed
- Great progress is being made on the MVP and is on track to be delivered before Christmas. PEN testing taking place next week.
- Challenges:
- MAA Bugs and issues continue
- Unknown future of the project and who will be running it is causing uncertainty.
Manage My Home – Yvonne – HackIT workstream DM
- Celebrations:
- Repairs showing in MMH now live!
- Team have left the work in a good place and well documented to be picked up again in the new year
- Challenges:
- With the Amido contract ending we have a very small internal team so ability to produce functionality or progress work is very limited.
Repairs – Sarah – HackIT workstream DM
- Celebrations:
- MMH now displaying repairs data
- Bug fix for mobile – jobs no longer disappearing when completed
- Bug fix in DRS – jobs are now being closed to the correct time
- Challenges:
- Saturday & Monday there were issues scheduling jobs in DRS due to a release on Friday
- Dealing with queries regarding the Bonus Calculation app
- New phones ready for plasterers, multi traders and carpenters which is great, distributing them however is proving challenging so we’ve asked the managers to work with the planners to book the time
Plenty of good news this week. We’ve resolved our Google Groups issue that was blocking the display of repairs data in Manage My Home which means that information is now available for everyone using that product! We also fixed a number of issues in Managed Arrears including the NOSP (Notice of Seeking Possession) bug.
The paperwork is complete to extend the contracts for two of our vendors until mid-Feb. We’re also busy reviewing the Digital Marketplace submissions for the agency to take over all three workstreams in the new year as we transform into a product team (likely with a number of sub-teams given the size of the programme).
We’re sad to see one of our vendors rolling off this week. The work they have done on Manage My Home has been excellent and they’ve inspired service design and technology improvements (especially around testing) across HackIT.
We held our first Product Owner meeting for a while which made a great start on discussing how we’ll measure the benefits of the programme. Much more on this to do in the new year.
We re-started the conversation around how we’ll define the hierarchy of assets (estates, blocks, dwellings, etc) in our Asset data microservice as this will become important in all workstreams in the near future.
Work continues on how we can ensure that a number of components that HackIT is building (patches, Document Store, notifications, etc) can and are reused by as many of our developed services as possible.
After speaking to the Product Owners I’ve been re-inspired to set up my idea for a regular “blue sky day” to change the narrative for the programme away from replacing Universal Housing to one about what we want the long term vision of the combined service to be. I’m looking forward to discussing who should be involved in that – potentially including a set of resident representatives.
Finally, our contractor job role is still open – if you know anyone who may be interested please email david.durant@hackney.gov.uk.
