Technical Working Sessions

A Technical Working Session is a collaborative meeting where backend users of the CHT (such as app developers and data scientists) and CHT Community product managers, software engineers, and UX researchers come together to dive deeper into technical issues and develop potential solutions in real time. These sessions provide valuable insights into the experiences of users developing and configuring the CHT.

Planning and Recruiting

1. Technical working sessions can be set up in two ways:
   1. Partners reach out to the CHT Community for support with specific issues
   2. A CHT Community member identifies a relevant project to ongoing work and invites them to a technical working session:
   3. Ensure objectives for the session are clear and communicated in advance
2. Identify a time that works best for both teams and the logistics of the call (platform, being on video, screen sharing, etc.)
3. The projects’ team shares a list of current issues, with context on how they encountered the problem they are trying to solve, in order of priority beforehand
4. The CHT Community members involved review the issues in order to attend the session with prepared documentation and identify the teammates who are best suited to address them (often a Product Owner, Software Engineer, UX Researcher)

Here is a sample technical working session document.

Executing

1. Have the session participants introduce themselves
2. Explain the purpose and duration of the session
3. If a CHT Community member-Initiated Session:
   1. Confirm the priority order of the topics before starting
4. If a Partner-Initiated Session:
   1. Hand over to partner and allow them to lead the session based on their issues priority
5. Ask permission to record the conversation and start recording
6. Begin reviewing each topic, asking the user to provide additional context before diving in
7. Once all topics have been covered, ask the user if they have any questions or anything they’d like to discuss
8. Agree on potential next steps from the call
9. Thank them for their time and let them know to encourage a continual discussion after the call; on the forum or via email

Tips:

• Be warm and professional
• Make it an open back and forth discussion between both teams
• Focus on one issue at a time
• Aim to understand the root cause of the problem before offering a solution
• Ensure you understand the “why” and the “how” behind the issue
• Give users the chance to ask questions themselves
• Where possible, share screen and replicate the issues to see the issue in real time
• Record your session and have someone take notes so you can focus on being present
• Ensure all shared resources are kept in the meeting document for reference

Synthesizing

1. Key insights and feedback are documented and categorized into themes, considering:
   1. What the issue was
   2. How the user arrived to the issue
   3. How they tried to address it
   4. What the user felt and thought
2. Each theme is translated into an actionable problem statement
3. Categorize the nuggets into themes
4. Review all insights within each theme to create an actionable problem statement

The problem statement should be a human-centered explanation of the issue to be addressed or challenge to solve.