We were invited to work with staff in a South West Regional Development Centre to support better knowledge sharing and learning, and deliver a range of tailored solutions.

The development centre works to improve the quality of life for people who use health and social care services in the South West region. It operates in a region with a population of 9.9 million people living within rural and urban communities, different cultural communities, and some areas of economic deprivation.

We worked with the team enhancing internal and external communications, supporting better knowledge sharing and improving performance management and evaluation processes.

Rowan and the team really listened to us to discover exactly what we wanted and now works alongside us to deliver great solutions.

Kate Schneider, Deputy Director of the Development Centre

Networked co-production

In this project we used collaborative tools such as wikis to support our work. Once we have agreed the broad outline of work we use wiki pages to create an overall delivery architecture and shape up the detail of each area of delivery.

The wiki has helped to us quickly establish agreement about and a shared understanding of our work. The project team have found that this is a much more practical and dynamic tool to support ongoping operational activities than the traditional PRINCE 2 project plan. The wiki lends itself to a more emergent and networked form of co-production across teams. There is an immediacy to change that helps us to feel connected to work that continually lives and breathes. This is particularly important when we are geographically dispersed.

Benefits

• Innovative use of visual tools for concept development
• Early delivery of positive results to gain support from development centre staff
• Willingness to adopt a prototyping approach, using what works throwing out what doesn’t
• Effective use of social software tools to support planning and delivery
• Increased confidence in communications potential amongst the development centre staff
• Growing commitment to the importance of evaluation to our work