Agile Delivery

Co-op Finder Alpha

benrieveley11 Comments
Co-op-Finder-Alpha
Co-op Finder Alpha – list results view

We’ve made live our Co-op Finder Alpha. Have a look https://alpha.coop.co.uk/finder.

If you’ve ever used our old store locator, you’ll see there are lots of things that aren’t in the new one. There’s a reason for that. We don’t know whether it was useful or not, in fact there’s a lot we don’t know. 

We’ll use our Co-op Finder Alpha to learn more.

We do know a lot of people choose to come to our website to use our store locator to see whether we are open, usually around those times when opening hours in general are not obvious, like Sunday evenings and national holidays.

We also know that the next most common thing customers need, is to know where the nearest Co-op is to a specific location. 

We’ve kept a few obvious elements, like telephone numbers and links to get directions, but other than that we’ve removed anything that we don’t have an evidenced user need for.

There are two opportunities for users to provide feedback on the experience itself and whether the information is correct, through this and further user research we will understand better what needs to be there.

We’ve already learnt a lot and have some solid improvements in the pipeline that we’ll make live shortly.

Our show & tell is part of the coop.co.uk session every Wednesday, 10th Floor, 10.15-10.45 – all colleagues and Council members welcome.

Please let us know what you think.

Ben Rieveley
Product Manager

Show & tells at Co-op

Co-op

As we talk more and more about the products and services that we’re building at Co-op, lots of people have been asking us how they can find out more about them.

For each of the digital products and services that we’re working on we have regular show & tells.

What’s a show & tell?

It’s an opportunity to hear what the teams have been working on that week, what they’ve learned, and what’s coming next. It’s also where you’ll see working demos of what they’re building. We want as many people to come to them and to ask really difficult questions – the harder the better.

Picture of a recent show & tell
One of our recent show & tells

All colleagues and council members are welcome. They’re all held in our support centre at 1 Angel Square in Manchester, but we’re testing different ways to make them more accessible.

Here’s the list of what, when and where. We’ll update this post if they change and add any new ones.

Coop.co.uk
Wednesdays, 6th floor auditorium, Federation House. 10.15-10.50am

Food alphas 
Tuesdays, 3rd floor, Federation House. 11.00-12.00

Funeralcare
Every 2nd and 4th Tuesday, 12th floor, 1AS. 2.30-3.00pm

Membership
Every 2nd and 4th Thursday, 13th Floor, 1AS. 9.30 – 10.00am

 

If you have any questions, please comment on the blog or send us a Tweet

Gail Lyon

We’re looking for Delivery Managers.

Co-op2 Comments

I joined The Co-op at the beginning of the year as Head of Agile Delivery. It’s my job to help The Co-op get the most out of modern ways of delivering its services, so that:

  • It’s quicker to deliver and test them with real people.
  • They’re more responsive to feedback from the people that use them.
  • Teams self organise around continuous improvement.

Generally speaking, teams and organisations that adopt agile ways of working have a better chance of delivering the right thing, are happier and more collaborative. It is perfectly suited to an organisation built on co-operation and doing the right thing for its people.

By giving a group of people authority to solve a problem we've made them feel stronger and more confident

Since joining I’ve been doing the rounds in The Co-op to explain it in more detail and how other teams can adopt this mindset to delivery. Some teams are already on their way, but others need help.

The conversation goes something like this:

“Can you help Jamie?”
“Yes, of course. You probably need a Delivery Manager to help get you going.”
“What’s one of those? We’ve got project managers. Is that the same?”

At which point I usually share this excellent post by Emily Webber explaining the role of a Delivery Manager, because the answer is, it is different in important ways:

“It describes the person on the agile team whose main concern is enabling a team of skilled people to deliver value. They create the right environment for the team. They facilitate the team and remove obstacles and blockers that might get in their way. They work closely with the product manager (sometimes known as product owner), but while the product manager is concerned with the vision the delivery manager is concerned with making it happen. The perfect visionary and doer pairing”
Emily Webber

Have a read of the post and if you’re that person and have the right experience then get in touch. It’d be good to hear from you.

You can see more information about vacancies for Delivery Managers on our career site.

Jamie Arnold
Head of Agile Delivery