Client: Veterinary Medicines Directorate (VMD)

The Veterinary Medicines Directorate (VMD) is a UK government agency that protects animal health, public health and the environment. It is sponsored by the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (DEFRA).

TASK: Help VMD migrate legacy intranet to SharePoint

A business analyst and me (two senior consultants) were deployed to identify VMD user needs and determine what the agency needed to modernise a 30+ year old legacy system.

ACTION: A month of research and interviews

Working remotely between our offices in London and Portugal and the VMD in Surrey, we scheduled 2-weeks of back-to-back interviews. Our plan was:

• Content designer and business analyst to co-interview employees from 12 different teams within VMD
• Recorded video calls with consent.
• Real-time note-taking in Miro, visible to all attendees.
• Calls and notes uploaded to our secure-access system
• Business analyst to simultaneously begin researching SharePoint for an optimal configuration.
• Content designer to write up findings.
• Both consultants present to senior stakeholders with a view to VMD deciding whether to retain us (a different team of developers) for implementation after reviewing our report.

We held group interviews with 3 to 4 members of each team. One of us would interview while the other took notes. Each interview lasted an hour. We were visible on-camera and gave interviewees the option of turning theirs off. Our notes were anonymised and visible in real time for peace of mind. All interviews were only shared with those on the call.

Being interviewed was a new experience for most VMD employees. Once everyone got over the ‘astral projection’ prospect of seeing themselves and hearing their voices played back on video, they were extremely forthcoming with information, particularly concerning limitations and pain points with the existing system.

Comparisons between VMD and DEFRA intranets were rife, with difficulties gaining access for the purpose of accessing and sharing critical information a key issue.

RESULT: A user-centric intranet for VMD secures the contract to build it

Their feedback helped shape the configuration for a long-term SharePoint solution by allowing us to visualise and sketch possible solutions after 10 days of interviews.

Technical teams provided detailed walkthroughs while researchers added daily user experiences.

Presenting SharePoint configuration

We used the ‘Microsoft 365 Guidance for UK Government – Secure Configuration Blueprint (v3.0)’ to investigate ways to incorporate revised used needs into the new system and eventually presented a ‘hub and spoke’ model with custom modifications.

The thoroughness of our presentation convinved the VMD to continue using us for the implementation phase at which point our technical teams replaced us on the engagement to carry the work forward thtough build, testing and launch.