Getting out of the building: Learning from our colleagues

Do you really understand how your products are used in context?

One challenge I've observed while working across policy, operations and delivery teams is that we often think of ourselves as separate groups with different objectives. Policy teams can sometimes see delivery teams as the people who implement policy, while delivery teams can view policy teams as their customers. In reality, neither is true. We are all working towards the same outcome and each team brings a different perspective that is essential to designing effective services.

The difficulty is that even though we are all working towards the same goal, we operate in different contexts. How well do you understand how people use your service, and what might you be missing if you do not see their work yourself?

This is where one of the most important principles of product management comes in: "getting out of the building."

Put simply, if we are designing and delivering digital services for people, we need to spend time understanding how those people actually work. Insights from user research and data are essential, but there is no substitute for also sitting alongside users, observing their day-to-day reality.

Getting out of my building

Last month I got out of my building in Wigan to visit London-based colleagues in the Office of Trade Sanctions Implementation (OTSI). OTSI colleagues, and the businesses they serve, are the primary users of services designed and delivered by the Digital, Data and Technology team I am part of. Close collaboration between the 2 teams helps ensure digital products support the realities of sanctions casework. It is essential that we understand the operational environment in which those services are used.

Before visiting OTSI, much of my casework understanding came from conversations with managers, workshops and requirements discussions. These are all valuable sources of information, but they inevitably provide a higher-level view of how work happens. I believed we would be better equipped to make decisions about systems and services that directly affect caseworkers if we had a deeper understanding of their day-to-day work.

The purpose of the visit was straightforward: to spend time with OTSI caseworkers to understand how they do their jobs, the complexity of their work, and the everyday challenges they encounter. I wanted to understand how caseworkers manage cases, identify pain points, and uncover opportunities to improve the tools and processes they use.  

I was fortunate to visit on a day when a team leader was inducting a new caseworker. This provided a particularly useful opportunity to see how experienced staff work through cases, and how new colleagues are introduced to the service, its processes, systems and terminology.

Seeing the work first-hand helped me build empathy for caseworkers and begin to bridge the gap between how we think work happens and how it actually happens in practice.

Making our products work for users

As product professionals, one of our responsibilities is to identify opportunities for improvement and ensure they are reflected in future planning and prioritisation. The session highlighted several areas where we may be able to improve the user experience over time. Some opportunities were relatively small, such as simplifying naming conventions and terminology. We learned that using simpler and more consistent language could help reduce cognitive load for both new and experienced users. We also identified opportunities to use existing DDaT capabilities to streamline processes, rather than creating entirely new solutions. 

These observations do not currently represent a finished solution, and they will need to be considered alongside other priorities. However, they demonstrate the value of seeing users at work.

Spending time with caseworkers surfaced specific opportunities that can now inform future product decisions. The insights have been captured and will be considered for future prioritisation alongside evolving business needs.

What struck me most was the complexity of the work caseworkers undertake. It was important to understand not just the technology they use, but the wider context in which they operate. When developing products and services, it can be easy to focus on features, requirements and delivery milestones.

Spending time with users provides a valuable reminder that every feature we build sits within a much larger operational process. Seeing how people make decisions, where they spend most of their time, and where frustrations occur allows us to make better product decisions and ultimately deliver greater value.

Getting out of the building is not just for product teams

Although 'getting out of the building' is often associated with product management, its value extends far beyond product teams. Whether you're a developer, business analyst, delivery manager, user researcher, interaction designer, architect or tester, spending time with the people who use our services can provide insights that cannot be captured in a backlog item or meeting note. By observing real users in their working environment, we develop a deeper understanding of the problems we are trying to solve and build stronger relationships with the teams we support.

My visit to OTSI reinforced just how valuable these interactions can be. It gave me a much better understanding of what matters most to caseworkers, how the service operates in practice, and where future opportunities may exist to improve the experience.

Ensuring the visit counts

The immediate next step is to reconnect with the team, clarify several follow-up questions that emerged from the session, and continue building our understanding of the caseworker experience.

The experience has encouraged me to build more of this engagement into my approach to product management. By spending time with a wider range of operational teams and users, I hope to develop a deeper understanding of their challenges and test assumptions earlier. This will ensure that future improvements are grounded in the realities of day-to-day work.

Building better solutions

Getting out of the building is ultimately about working together. If you work in Digital, Data and Technology, spend time with the people who use your services.

If you work in policy or operations, give your digital colleagues the opportunity to sit alongside your users and understand their work.

Bring us in. Let us understand the problem together, and together we can build better solutions.