Expert review in practice

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Our client NOC*NSF owns and manages the platform Sportinfrastructuur.nl. In order for the Dutch population to enjoy sports and exercise, a functional, affordable, qualitative and sustainable sports infrastructure is key. Their digital quality management platform serves as a single source of truth of the sports infrastructure. It helps local governments with union rules and regulations for realisation, exploitation and renovation of safe and sustainable sports accommodations, and manages the quality of current sports infrastructure.

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At the beginning of 2024 NOC*NSF sought the help of fresk.digital, because they were not satisfied with Sportinfrastructuur.nl in its current form, they felt their investment did not match the results it was bringing them and the growth they were aiming for. To really understand how we could help them, we did a thorough expert review. 
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Scope:

We identified three important challenges NOC*NSF was facing:

• Their system was unstable;
• Their platform was not extensible;
• The digital product’s usability was below par, resulting in frustration for their professional users.

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Review:

To get a clear view on where the core of the challenges lay, we took a closer look at the technical code, the existing backlog and the product documentation. It helped us gather the right insights to map and prioritise the next steps to help them towards finally realising their business goals. This exercise exposed significant flaws in the existing development backlog, making this the first main priority in order to solve the key challenges of the digital platform. 

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Advice:

Based on the insights of the review, we suggested actionable advice in various domains.  

• Improve existing code:
  We weighed the pros and cons of moving forward with the existing code. The shortest path to value was to use the existing code and improve it. This meant taking over the code, starting improvements and deploying new features.

• Reset the backlog:
  The existing backlog was not up to standard: it lacked structure, contained an overload of irrelevant user stories that were uncategorised, unclear and unprioritised. The best next step was to start over and reassess the backlog items:
  • ‍User research:
    We conducted stakeholder and user interviews to assess focus.
  • ‍Priority setting:
    The research laid out three important themes for improvement:
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    • ‍Reliability and stability:
      Different stakeholders and clients have different needs from the platform. By differentiating between them and offering each role and responsibility their specific perspective, the platform will offer a clear flow for their needs.
    • ‍‍Content expansion; As an add-on to the existing content and information on the platform, there is a need for more types of content for different professional users. 
    • ‍Visible user-friendliness: The platform had bugs in the user experience bringing frustration to the professional user in their workflow. By taking these away we bring a seamless user experience and a happy flow.

With this focus, the backlog now contained the best next steps towards reaching the business and user goals of NOC*NSF for the short term, but still with the eye on the long term vision.

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Result:

Thanks to the Expert Review we were able to create a reliable platform for NOC*NSF and their professional users, making it a digital product that supports their work flow instead of working against them. The progress will be made while we keep the platform stable and reliable.

Now that the platform is reliable it makes space for further improvements and new features. We are currently measuring the platform (both qualitative and quantitative). In this Optimise & Grow phase we gather insights, allowing us to learn from the behaviour of the professional user. This helps us define and prioritise improvements and changes that are beneficial for their business growth and their users needs. Bob Thomassen, responsible for Sportinfrastructuur.nl at NOC*NSF says: “It was no coincidence that we approached fresk.digital to help us with the challenges of our digital platform. Their expertise and structured approach helped us assess the pain points in Sportinfrastructuur.nl and help solve the main issues our professional users were running into. And we are glad we did! For our stakeholders and clients the optimisation is making a huge difference. We are actually seeing this in the use of our service.”