Dissatisfied by the rate of responses from shelters in the last sprint, we resolved to fast-track getting prototype feedback sessions by bypassing management altogether and talking directly with front-desk staff. However, our Community Partner tempered these ambitions, urging us to reconsider. It was frustrating at first to hear, but we understood that her advice, won from years of experience, was true: that our desired pace was out of step with the leaden tempo of the housing sector, and that the best way to secure meetings was to slow our sprint to match their marathon, steadily making our way through the proper channels.
Grateful as we were to have our community partner’s guidance, worry pressed on us, and we felt a little lost. We had spent the last two weeks building a beautiful working prototype—but this was only our opinion, and if we couldn’t get feedback from our end users, how would we know it would actually help them? If we were in a 4 month co-op in a sector where projects take years, would we have enough time to solidify requirements, iterate on the prototype, and implement it in at least one shelter before December?
Our plan for this sprint, crumpled up and tossed out the window, now demanded a change. We put our heads together and as a team brainstormed what we could do to maneuver around this hurdle. We researched other paths this project could shift toward, such as integrating our website with an existing system called HIFIS. Following a suggestion from our ambassador, Parker, we contacted shelters in Vancouver, a space we hoped we may be able to gather feedback, unhampered by propriety. We scheduled a meeting for next week with an organization in Abbotsford whose application resembles ours, who can detail the utility of their app and the steps they took in its creation. We’re honing our rhetorical appeals in preparation for next week’s meeting with a shelter in Victoria. And as a substitute for our end-users, as well as a test-run for how to administer future feedback sessions, we asked the other INSPIRE teams to trial our prototype.
We are so thankful for the other teams, who eagerly experimented with our prototype and gave us critical feedback to improve it, while dispensing generously with positive feedback that boosted our morale. The entire INSPIRE community has been an anchor in the moments where we’re feeling lost. For example, Jay and Anna reminded us not to lose sight of project management and documentation, endorsing it as a means to fortify against current and future uncertainty. And as each team has weathered setbacks and new starts, it’s been encouraging to see how we all pull ourselves through.