Get help from other roles
We’re a multidisciplinary team made up of people with a diverse mix of skills and expertise. This helps us make better quality decisions that lead to great outcomes for users, as opposed to working in siloes which isolate people from each other based on their role. Great ideas come from combining different perspectives.
We can learn from people in other roles by working directly with them on projects. But when this isn’t possible, we can still ‘knock on their door’ and ask for help. It’s okay to ask for help.
If we ask people for help, it’s okay for them to say no and explain why. For example, they might not have capacity.
A basic template
You can use a few pieces of information to help other people understand, assess and respond to your ask for help.
- Which role (or person) you need help from: it’s easy to glance past general requests for help when busy, so make it clear to the person or people you need help from.
- What you need: describe what you might need someone to do and what their input helps unblock.
- How long it might take: minutes, hours, days or weeks? Let people know how much time they might need to invest (or ask for their opinion).
- Whether it’s time sensitive: if people know you need urgent help, they might be able to shift their priorities around to help.
Product and delivery managers
A product manager is responsible for the quality of their products. They use their knowledge of user needs and business goals to frame problems and set priorities for delivery teams. A delivery manager is accountable for the delivery of products and services. You can read more about product managers’ skills and deliver managers’ skills on the Government Digital and Data Profession Capability Framework.
You can ask a product manager and delivery manager for help with
- making a decision
- resolving a blocker
- improving pace of delivery
- working out what to do next
- scoping sprint goals
- using GitHub
- planning a workshop or meeting
- clarity of your role in a work stream
- escalating an issue
To get help
- send a direct message on Slack
- use a collaborative tool such as Padlet, Trello, Mural or Google Doc to frame your thoughts
- arrange a call
You can see who is the current product or delivery manager on the ‘Who we are’ page.
Designers
Our designers cover the interaction, service and graphic design disciplines. A graphic designer creates graphic elements that underpin interaction and service design. An interaction designer works out the best way to let users interact with services, in terms of both overall flow and at the level of individual design elements. A service designers design the end-to-end journey of a service. You can read more about user-centred design roles on the Digital, Data and Technology Profession Capability Framework.
On this team, we tend not to focus on job titles and we work as a group instead. Though each of us will have particular areas of expertise, we will often work together to draw from each other’s skills and knowledge.
You can ask a designer for help with
- understanding the problem you’re trying to solve
- working with the team to advocate for users
- interpreting user research and data
- proposing potential solutions to your problem
- making a prototype to test assumptions
- making sure the thing you’re working on is inclusive and accessible
- visual design assistance on the thing you’re working on
To get help
- send a message on Slack
- use a collaborative tool such as Padlet, Trello, Mural or Google Doc to frame your thoughts
- arrange a call
Frontend developer
A frontend developer designs, builds and improves website software that meets user needs. They write clean, accessible and open code, and are knowledgeable about fundamental frontend technologies such as HTML, CSS and JavaScript. You can read more about frontend developers’ skills on the Government Digital and Data Profession Capability Framework.
On the Design System team, frontend developers build and maintain GOV.UK Frontend, the Design System website and the rest of our product repositories.
You can ask a frontend developer for help with:
- using GitHub
- investigating and implementing automation on GitHub
- transforming designs into working HTML pages
- the feasibility of designs when translated to code
- HTML, CSS and JavaScript
- accessibility best practices
- web performance
- setting up our projects and their tooling on your machine
- troubleshooting errors when running our projects (both on your machine and GitHub)
To get help
- Post a message in #design-system-dev on Slack
- Send a direct message on Slack
- Arrange a call