Summary of July Sprints
In July, we completed our work on enrolling a device in our Vision type (a high-fidelity prototype used to communicate and align on future experiences) using Intune.
We now have the capabilities in the test environment to
- Provision packages to enroll existing computers
- Use Windows Autopilot to automatically configure all new devices
- Allow device managers (known as unit admins in Intune) to manually enroll devices and manage them based on ad-hoc needs in their departments and divisions
Additionally, we have been prototyping on-premise single sign-on (SSO) access to model how this could work for device users and managers, considering what we will need in a live environment.
Darren (Technical Lead) and Frances (Business Change Manager) recently presented at the ICTF conference on the Shared Device Management project and performed a demo of the Vision type from a technical perspective. The team showcased our progress on enrolment, the vision for hybrid access, and future application management plans for our discovery report. Lawrence (our service designer) carried out interviews with three device managers across departments and divisions to understand their needs when delivering a device management service. This was to better understand what frontline device managers need and identify opportunities for improvement. Conducting these sessions in person allowed us to gather extra details, see any issues firsthand, and gain better visibility of the process, which can be hard to see via video calls.
Other research activities included interviewing device users. James (our UX researcher) has reached out to device managers in divisions and departments to speak to people who have recently been set up with a device in the last six months to understand their experience of using the service based on their needs. We will be writing up the findings and adding them to our discovery report in due course.
What did we learn in July?
One notable finding was the number of physical monitors used to provision a device, leading to a lot of moving from screen to screen. Consolidating functionalities into one platform on a single monitor as part of the shared device management project should help improve this. While work has been progressing on configuring the Vision type, we’ve also learnt we need to have more of a focus on building end-to-end iterations that can be tested and validated in a true agile style. This will help meet our goal to complete the first phase, which is to have a shared device management service for Windows machines that can be trialled with MSD and GLAM.
To help with this, the team has been using a new method of mapping out the requirements to help prioritise what we need to work on now and in future iterations. This will form the basis of what we will work on in each sprint and help identify any dependencies and risks early on.
What’s happening in August?
We will continue our user research and our work to configure the Vision type with new features based on what we’ve learnt about device managers' needs. We'll also be preparing our update to present at the ITSS pre-year round up briefing on 18 September. More information on how to sign up will be provided for this soon.
Questions or interested in joining our next sprint review?
The next sprint review is taking place on Wednesday 10 September from 14:30 to 15:30.
Email us to join: shared.infrastructure@admin.ox.ac.uk If you’d like to receive these updates directly in your inbox, you can sign up below.
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We’ll be taking a break from these updates for August, but will be back again in September.
