Thread by @AtypicalDavid

#CharityDigital It's vital that our approach to digital transformation is in line with our overall organisational strategy. This not only aligns the work with our vision but also makes it easier to obtain buy-in for the project at a senior level.

Underpinning our strategy are the four accelerators shown above. While it may be natural to see digital transformation as falling only under accelerator 3 — evolving and adapting our practices — there are aspects of digital that support all four of the accelerators.

We're a charity formed of two recent mergers, and have a number of separate and unconnected websites — the main site, a secure donations site, a community forum, an in-memory fundraising site, and several other fundraising sites. The result is an inconsistent user experience.

So we've reframed digital to be obsessively user-focused, to provide a seamless and personalised experience. We've adopted Agile methodologies to consider the digital landscape as a whole. Thanks to players of @PostcodeLottery, this is our largest investment in digital to date.

The funding has allowed us to recruit a dedicated project manager, and we appointed @TPXimpact as our partner on this exciting journey. thedrum.com/profile/tpximp…

The deep-dive discovery phase allowed @TPXimpact to fully immerse themselves in everything we do, which was distilled into three key recommendations.

A hybrid headless model combines the benefits of headless with those of a traditional CMS-based system. The main content is within our chosen CMS (Umbraco), while we use APIs to integrate specialist technologies as well as connect to third-party platforms.

We're building a pattern library to ensure a consistent look and feel across all of the various platforms and systems we are integrating.

A strong example of the benefits of hybrid headless is our integration our digital asset management platform, Asset Bank from @builtbybright. Instead of using the CMS's built-in media library, we have a single source of truth for images on our digital platforms.

What's more, our DAM integration respects image permission expiry dates, and provides a simple way to replace an image across the system. (I am very excited about this! It's not often you see governance and innovation in the same space.)

We've adopted a modularised approach to content creation, which provides for cross-populated content and centrally managed key messages and glossary terms that can be use across the site. We're introducing layers of personalisation that respond to our users' levels of engagement.

The Agile method has allowed us to flex and adapt to both project and stakeholder needs, but not without challenges. Agile does not mean unplanned, and teams need to know when they'll be expected to feed into a sprint so they can make sure they hold time in their diaries.

This phase of our project will be complete in March 2023, by which time we'll have replaced many of our legacy sites. But there are wider opportunities to build on the hybrid headless setup and integrate further.

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