Much of the world has been brought to a standstill by Covid-19. Borders shut, flights grounded, cities under lockdown.
At SPARCK, we have rapidly responded by transitioning all our teams into a distributed workforce that can continue to deliver outstanding work for our clients.
We did this to protect our people and our clients – what’s more we did it in a matter of days and without any loss of productivity. I’m proud to say that we are as open now as we always have been! So, how did we do it?
It’s about Distributed Agility
It is no small feat to deliver such a radical change to the ways of working at SPARCK and at our parent company, BJSS. But we could do this seamlessly because our culture is fundamentally Agile. We embrace ambiguity and adapt. Our people deliver change every day and this is no different. Across the group, people quickly established new remote routines to support the critical work they do for our clients.
Technology as a critical enabler
Having the right tools for the right job is more important than ever. Our teams have access to a wide range of tools so that they can deliver to all clients in every situation. We’re also not afraid to try new tools and see what happens.
Remote Collaboration
We like to take our clients along on every step of the design journey, so no one is ever left behind. To support distributed workshops and remote Discoveries, we use virtual whiteboards and digital collaboration spaces so everyone can join in.
Communication
Staying in touch with each other is always important, but even more so when working remotely. We use the latest video conferencing and messaging technologies to continue collaboration with our clients and across all our teams. Whether it’s a stand-up or just a virtual coffee, we’ve moved all our communications to digital.
Security
We work with clients in some of the most regulated industries and sectors. We understand the requirements and compliance they require – especially when teams are working remotely. Our parent company, BJSS, has years of experience in data and cloud security meaning that we are able to work securely and help our clients to achieve effective and safe remote ways or working.
Distributed Development
For our Designers and Consultants, collaborative tracking of tasks and progress is important. We support the needs of our clients and use industry-wide digital project management tools to keep distributed teams in sync.
We design to deliver
Our clients have always had unique needs and we are proud to have always taken a bespoke approach when helping them. During this crisis, it remains central to our ethos and our culture. We are here to help each client deliver their business goals.
Recently, we as SPARCK and BJSS have been involved in:
- Designing strategies, products and services
- Consulting on business management and change
- Architected and developed tactical digital solutions
- Running optimised and scaled technology platforms.
Here are a few examples:
- We are continuing to help deliver and improve the NHS App, a core piece of the digital infrastructure that is being used heavily in the response to Covid-19
- We are redesigning a critical payments infrastructure and defining how teams interact with a complex service, while also embedding design practices into a fully engineering focused Delivery Team
- We are continuing to support a client through their digital transformation, which is more relevant now than ever for the future of their business and to support their customers during this time
- And, finally, we are continuing to support a government client through their complete organisational transformation using a service design approach to better enable funding for critical research and innovation projects.
