A look behind the scenes - ISB project kickoff

In this blog series we would like to give an insight into our working methods. In the nature of our projects often lies a certain secrecy. Now, however, a nice opportunity has arisen that allows a look over our shoulder.

We have won the tender of the State Institute for School Quality and Educational Research Munich (ISB) for the relaunch of the main website and are very much looking forward to this task. The ISB is a subordinate institution of the Bavarian Ministry of Education and Cultural Affairs and supports the further development and quality assurance of schools and education. The ISB sees itself as an important partner for teachers who want to use its competence and commitment for the daily organization of school and teaching.

Project Setup

Our Team

At F7, this project is the responsibility of Team Voyager. Even the call for proposals was initiated and prepared from within the team. We are an interdisciplinary team of 6 people in total. Photos of us can be found here.

Organizational

As usual for our team, we planned the implementation of the relaunch in sprints with our client. In probably five sprints of two weeks each we will approach this project as agile as possible. Before each sprint, we will discuss the tasks that we would like to realize in the next sprint with our contacts at ISB in "sprint planning". For this purpose, we identify the tasks that are most important in order to decisively increase the value of the product (the new ISB website). Some of the functionalities are required by the RFP in great detail; for others, we have more freedom.

About this Blog Series

For this project, we want to offer a closer look into our work. We will create sprint-accompanying blog posts in which we present the current progress, but also present and justify our decisions on the design or individual technical details. We are aware that we may make one or two wrong decisions that we will have to deal with or correct later. But that's how projects of a certain complexity work: together we learn during the project and successively make it better.

Pre-sprint

As part of the tendering process, we developed a rough proposal for the concept and suggestions for the graphic design - without an in-depth exchange with the client, as is so common in tenders. Fortunately, with this preliminary work we already met the ISB's ideas very well. Nevertheless, there is always room for improvement and refinement. In preparation for the first sprint, we therefore entered into an intensive exchange with the ISB. In two kickoff meetings, we gained an overview of the status quo on the one hand and sharpened our understanding of the target vision through targeted questions on the other. On this basis, we were able to formulate requirements and define tasks for the first sprint.