First steps for a user engagement team

If your organisation/NREN is just setting up and you are in the process of looking to develop a user engagement function the following aspects need to be considered:

• Who (from your potential users) are you going to invest time and energy in?

• What services do you wish to offer them?

The first thing to remember is that people do business with people. You can approach this systematically, by identifying potential users and contacting them. Or, you can approach people who you meet organically at events, conferences and the like. In both cases you would need to slowly start to get to know your potential users and build trust between them and your organisation.

There are 6 steps you would typically go through:

• Understand the players - who is operating in the R&E sector in your domain, what are their objectives

• Understand what services you want to offer - connectivity, t&i (eduroam and eduGAIN), video conferencing etc

• Understand the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats to your organisation - Think of risks and how to mitigate them: Security & privacy, Significant upfront investments required in delivering a service, political capital required.

• Segment the customer base - classify your customers based on those which are less risky to serve . Then prioritise the sub-sectors to target.

• Develop marketing material - Focus on the top priority services you want to offer, tailored for that customer segment you wish to target.

• Target individuals or the small groups of people - Focus on individuals working at the organisations in the segment you are trying to target. Target the person responsible for IT or, failing that, the director of the organisation. Position yourself depending on who you are talking to. Pithy quote: CTOs talk with CTOs, CEO’s do business with CEOs.

Notes on understanding the players:Research about standards, protocols, technologies or research themes and the forums where your targeted user communities, providers, consultants and partners gather together in your country to discuss. If none exist, set up a meeting to invite those groups together to create that forum, so as to discuss interesting topics together. This also will help to establish your NREN as a trusted partner with those organisations that join your meetings.

Research about regulations, directives, financial schemes and other acts which will impact on your NREN. Try to understand how the political machinery of your nation works. Respond to government questionnaires/surveys/consultations about the areas your NREN is interested in. This will raise your profile with the government and allow you to position your organisation appropriately as the consultation develops into legislation.

Check tenders and requests of information about government and other projects (including private) in the segment you are targeting. This helps to qualify opportunities, identify local prospects and potential providers. It also shows the trend of investment, helps to identify new regulations etc.

In general, on an annual basis, you should be aiming to build a strong organisational identity with your prospective users:

Participate in symposiums, conferences, workshops and events

Run marketing campaigns to promote what you do and the other organisations you have helped. User stories make great marketing.

Host workshops and seminars related to your area of expertise. Invite speakers from outside your country to present. Help be part of the global R&E community.

Considerations when working on a proposal

When working on a proposal, especially one which is multinational and or bespoke, there are a number of inputs which need to be collected and explored in order to arrive at a sound technical solution, which will work for all involved parties. This principle is known as the 90/10 principle. 90% of the work of the user engagement role is ensuring that the constraints are known from all sides. 10% of the work is coming up with and writing the solution. An analogy for this is orbiting the event horizon. You will find that the more actors involved in a project, the longer it will take to establish a common solution, the more you will circle the proverbial plug hole. It comes down to discovering what people can live with and what fixed positions cannot be budged.

Of the things to bear in mind or explore before you can arrive at a solution:

• Who are the actors involved in this project and their roles (especially the technical contacts who will be responsible/accountable for implementing the solution)?

• Timeline / timescales (flexible or not)?

• What is trying to be achieved (who benefits and in what expected way)?

• Political factors, considerations, limitations and weightings?

• Economic limitations and flow (where does the money come from)?

• Existing contractual arrangements?

• Geographic constraints?

• Procedural/organisation considerations of all actors involved (such as procurement and financial rules)?

• Managerial/accountability implications?

• Technical requirements

  • Physical + Logical connection (for connectivity)?

  • Authentication flow (for T&I)?

  • Security constraints?

  • Required operational service wrap?

  • Current and future requirements (scalability)?

By building a relationship and having regular interactions with the community you are working with, you will begin to understand the political factors, considerations, limitations and weightings. This in practice takes the longest amount of time and is a lot of work. By understanding these factors, when you come to the technical requirements, you will be able to avoid going around in circles too many times. Instead your role switches to guiding the technical teams towards a technically optimal solution based on the constraints. The alternative is lots of back and forth with technical designs being rejected and having to return to the drawing board multiple times.

As a suggested approach:

• Initial discussion with the user community/organisation about what challenge they are facing that they need assistance with. Take down as many of the requirements as you possibly can. In your head come up with a design you think might meet their requirements but don’t actively propose this. Instead, ask questions around it to see if it will or won’t work. Try to tease out the non technical constraints.

• Discuss with internal management what is the requirement from the community and try and understand what their non-negotiable position is.

• Arrange an internal meeting / workshop with the technical team who will be working on the solution. Use this to prep them for the constraints as well as the requirements. Adapt your design as appropriate.

• Arrange a workshop with all the technical stakeholders present. The discussion should focus on the constraints they are limited to, probing possible constraints and limitations around the design you have in your head. The output of the meeting should be a list of specific technical requirements and an action to write up a proposal.

• Follow up the meeting with the minutes and agreed action points. Get confirmation that everyone agrees with what is written down.

• Follow your own organisation’s internal procedures for generating a proposal for the community.