No Delays – transforming GPs and patients relationship

No Delays is the most ambitious and innovative product I had the pleasure to manage in 2013. A series of projects were completed successfully, leading to a great product developed and being piloted used in Scotland with the aim to transform the relationship between GPs, consultants and patients.

The main idea behind the product is providing GPs with the extraordinary ability to prescribe “electronic package” to patients with long-term conditions. The most obvious benefits are:
- Providing patients with high-quality but easy to understand medical presentation/s.
- Access to personalised information and next steps actions.
- Empowering the patients to take control and take the best possible care.
- Supporting patients digitally.
- Reduction in the outpatient attendance
- Improving the collaboration between GPs and specialists.

SCRUM was used to facilitate the work, breaking down the epic requirements into user stories and acceptance criteria and organising the delivery into short two-week sprints. On top of that more traditional (PRINCE2) project management happened and the usually expected documentation (mandate, business case, plan/budget/resourcing, etc...) was elaborated.

Though, the document which got most of the focus was the product backlog containing all the items we might ever do for the product. Closer to a sprint review date we had a backlog grooming sessions to break down, clarify and plan the next sprint items. On the sprint review itself the items were further clarified, estimated, further prioritised and the lucky ones found their spot into the sprint backlog.

The team varied throughout the different projects and usually consisted of UX expert, design specialist, 2 back-end developers, 1 front-end developer and a content producer. The head of the product design was the designated product owner and I acted as scrum master, QA, content producer and covered any other roles when needed. On top of Scrum I managed the stakeholders’ relationship assisting the product owner with gathering requirements and adding new items to the backlog.

The total budget for all No Delays projects in 2013 was close to half a million GBP. We developed two prototypes, organised and delivered the content for 9 conditions, did some usability testing and ended up with an MVP developed in less than 2 months. The last project had a couple of sprints to continue with the incremental development. The flexibility provided by Scrum was invaluable allowing us to adapt and improve the product on a two-week basis period and satisfy the stakeholders by constantly exceeding their expectations.

The product site: nodelays.co.uk