IBM Consulting

Overview

Oil and Gas Industry - ADAP

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The Automated Design Assurance Process is a solution to manage and execute design assurance across project phases from workplan creation through observation completion and design assurance close-out.

A versatile new tool designed to cater to a variety of roles

To bring this project to fruition, I employed the IBM Design framework: the Loop methodology.

Observe

We started this project by running a workshop and interviews with users and stakeholders with the intention to understand all the requirements needed to get two different tools in new one.

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Target outcomes:

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• Validate our understanding of the current-state experience and the different personas
• Identify and prioritize key opportunities for improvement
• Expand our ideas into tangible capabilities and supporting enablers
• Develop a compelling story of how our ideas come to life

Teams:

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Diverse teams enable us to see the same problem for many angles. They have a better understanding of any given situation and generate more ideas, making them more effective problem solvers.

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Problem Statement:

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How might we simplify and automate the current process for design assurance leads to empower easier tracking and management of observations, actions and communications?

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Pain points:

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• Lots of manual steps
• Too many emails
• Lack of status for the overall project
• Matching deliverable names to project deliverable names
• Lack of visibility on who needs to action on deliverable/observation/action
• Manual triggers and lack of automation
• Waiting for validation and verification to review deliverables
• Taking screenshots to communicate observation out to project engineers
• Lack of actionable observations “ is there anything to do with this observation? "
• Not a consistent design assurance process

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Persona validation:

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In the discovery phase of this initiative, we developed our proto-personas through user research and in the workshop, we validated the information to ensure what we had was accurate to expand our collective knowledge of users.

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Journey map:

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Running a journey map provides valuable insights into customer experiences and pain points, enabling businesses to identify opportunities for improvement, enhance customer satisfaction, and optimize their products or services. Additionally, it fosters a customer-centric approach, leading to better decision-making and increased loyalty.

Big idea vignettes exercise:

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With this activity, we were able to come up with many broad conceptual ideas that invite further exploration and discussion in order to solve for user needs. Then we grouped these ideas into four main themes and voted on them.

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• Dashboard status
  • Dashboard overall for DA by discipline
  • SME know they have something to review
  • How to measure progress to close out actions?
  • Next action, reminders
  • Workplan dashboard
  • Remaining reviews: SME A, SME B, SME
  • Observations and deliverables by status and standing
• What do I need to do?
  • Observation status viewer SME/DA filter by their name to find what the actions is, who has the ball?
  • Show status of observation
  • Initiate communications from dashboard with link to observation and deliverables
  • Status bar for each action/observation and owner (DA,PC,SME)
  • Attention item
• Easier copy/paste
  • Add a componente for DA to copy or edit text or auto populate final areas
  • Button to click and transfer
  • SME entry is copied into DA work space
• Remove numbers of steps
  • SME observation to action, send to project
  • Observations auto close when everything covered by an action

Reflect

To be journey - Steps:

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• Step 1 – Deliverable submission
  • Import workplan
  • Project team submits documents
  • When doc is ready the tool records to dashboard SME
• Step 2 – Observation generation
  • Observation created
  • DA edits/review
  • SME dashboard is prepared for workplan
  • SME gets notified if review is late
• Step 3 – Observation approval
  • Observation V&V passed to project
  • V&V observations link to all applicable workplan
  • Observation vetted
• Step 4 – Release to project
  • Observation makes an action recommendation
  • DA copy/paste feature to take SME comments to project
  • Ready for V&V button (DA view)
• Steps 5 – Project response
  • Project contact responds to observations
  • Project contact reviews response by SME and DA
  • “Send to DA” button
  • Project teams responds to actions and attaches documents
• Step 6 – Closure
  • Close observation and actions
  • DA “send to SME” (automated)

Hopes and fears:

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Here we were able to capture more information on what our user hopes and fear the team has for the to be journey.

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• Hopes: What are some hopes for the to be journey?
  • More efficient for all
  • Higher transparency
  • Project team link documents
  • Dashboard for all view
  • Reduce email traffic
  • Tool is searchable
  • Reminders, repeat daily
• Fears: What fears do the users have regarding the to be journey?
  • Frustrated about having to make manual inputs
  • Saves and projects built in yet another tool
  • It is not easy to use
  • SME´s and Project Contact communicate outside the tool
  • Reduced SME motivation if there are no personal prompts
  • Tool not intuitive enough

Dependencies:

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Here we were able to capture more information on what our user dependencies the team has for the to be journey so we can foresee any blockers.

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• Document revision clarity with another tool
• Project buy-in to a new tool
• Company access issues across users
• Document management system
• SME training, stuck in know methods (email)
• Various doc control tool
• Help desk to get issues resolved for users

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Findings:

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Automate the steps: A tool or system that takes management out of copy/pasting emails to different SME and Project. Reducing the margin for error and building efficiency for the design assurance to focus on quality.

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Capabilities:

• A place for SME to capture their notes on observations
• Ability for DA to include SME notes in communication with Project team
• Reminders/alerts for overdue observation to be surfaced
• Get all stakeholders approval on observation and actions

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One place to communicate: A centralized tool for keeping communications aligned to a project,observation or action. Reducing reliance on email and increasing transparency. Retaining life cycle of observation/action for all, with time stamp.

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Capabilities:

• Centralized communications
• Historical comments tied to project, observation and action
• Elapsed time surface for SME, Project and DA

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Dashboard: Intuitive user driven dashboard to give the users a view on everything they are responsible and need to take action or view status.

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Capabilities:

• DA needs to see open items
• Ability to view status and/or progress on the project phase
• Users need to be aware of awaiting actions needed

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Users flow

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In order to enhance the user experience, streamline navigation, and identify areas for improvement, we created a comprehensive user flow. This flow allowed us to gain a holistic view and determine the key features for our Minimum Viable Product (MVP), ensuring a seamless and intuitive journey for our users.

Make

Following the creation of wireframes and a medium-fidelity prototype,we developed a high-fidelity prototype for usability testing. Through iterations based on feedback, the design was refined and finalized to be handed off to the development team, ensuring a realistic representation of the final product and a user-friendly experience.

When the user clicks on a card in the previous screen, they will be directed to the deliverable page, where they can access detailed information.

Additionally, they can access the observation form, which is essential for resolving actions, as well as a chat feature to communicate with team members.

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