
<p>Founded by the Victorian government’s Future Farming Strategy the National Centre for Farmer Health (NCFH) is an organisation focused on the education, research and innovation into health, wellbeing and safety of farmers and rural communities.</p>



<p>In 2018, farms accounted for 23% of worker fatalities in Australia, yet the agriculture industry made up only 2.3% of the workforce (1).</p>



<p>NCFH had an incredible asset of information, research, and data on farming health, yet a challenge remained:</p>



<ul><li>How can these “hard to reach” community groups be better engaged to build awareness of farming hazards and to create a sustained, long-term and positive impact</li><li>How can the information, research and data be best presented in a way the is consumable, discoverable and in a medium that is useful to the community to utilise? </li></ul>



<p>Exco Partners was engaged by the National Centre for Farmer Health to address these challenges. Specifically, to uncover better ways to reach and engage with farming communities, and to develop new ways to interact with these groups to support long-term and sustainable benefit.</p>



<p>A project was established with the following objectives:</p>



<ul><li>Enable further reach and engagement with the clinical, educational, research and&nbsp;farming communities</li><li>Develop new ways to create a long-term connection with the above user groups</li><li>Increase the awareness of the NCFH and the hazards present in farming</li><li>Increase the NCFH ability to contribute to the positive health, wellbeing and safety, of farming and regional communities across Australia and internationally.</li></ul>



<p>The project was approached with three key phases drawing on Exco Partner’s CoreMethods™ methodology. Each phase was designed to address key aspects of the project and drew on specific skills across a combined Exco Partners and NCFH team. The first phase, Discovery, focused on customer research, stakeholder engagement, visual design, and planning. The second phase, Delivery, focused on software development and delivering the key features/functions as defined during the Discovery. The final phase, Launch, completed launch activities, released the finished project deliverables to the public and supported the release through the initial stages of user uptake.</p>



<div class="wp-block-exco-flex-container exco-flex-block container-fluid">
<div class="wp-block-exco-icon-card exco-icon-card" data-sal="slide-up" data-sal-duration="1000"><div class="icon"><img decoding="async" src="https://cms.excopartners.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/light-bulb.svg"/></div><div class="title">Discovery</div><div class="details">Mobilisation and project initiation. Planning, review existing artefacts, user research and analysis and visual design.
</div></div>



<div class="wp-block-exco-icon-card exco-icon-card" data-sal="slide-up" data-sal-duration="1000"><div class="icon"><img decoding="async" src="https://cms.excopartners.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/tools.svg"/></div><div class="title">Delivery</div><div class="details">Agile software build phase to deliver discovery scope.

Output of this phase will be a tested and release ready software package and completion of business readiness activities such as training.

</div></div>



<div class="wp-block-exco-icon-card exco-icon-card" data-sal="slide-up" data-sal-duration="1000"><div class="icon"><img decoding="async" src="https://cms.excopartners.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/rocket.svg"/></div><div class="title">Launch</div><div class="details">Business readiness, software released into production and Hyper-care activities to support business change and hand-over to lifetime support.</div></div>
</div>



<p>A “Human Centred Design” approach was used as the centre piece of Discovery activities. Human Centred Design is a method of problem solving and design that seeks to develop solutions that promote consideration of a human perspective. This method was particularly suited to the project as the core outcomes were human related, specifically regarding the health, wellbeing, and safety of farming and regional communities.</p>



<p>To better understand the problem space, the Exco Partners Customer Experience team started with a focused period of heuristic review of existing data and initiated a set of user research.</p>



<p>Exco Partners engaged a user stakeholder group comprising of farmers, industry body representatives, Deakin University, Agriculture Victoria, DHHS and health professionals, running a series of workshops, forums and interviews to understand the problem space. The insight from this stakeholder group informed a series of initiatives including:</p>



<ul><li>Development of a digital Health and Wellbeing Application, the Farmer HAT</li><li>A new Farmer Health Website, focusing on awareness, engagement, discovery and accessibility of health wellbeing and safety information.</li></ul>



<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter size-large is-resized"><img decoding="async" src="https://cms.excopartners.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/farmer-hat-1024x683.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-2404" width="700" srcset="https://cms.excopartners.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/farmer-hat-1024x683.jpg 1024w, https://cms.excopartners.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/farmer-hat-300x200.jpg 300w, https://cms.excopartners.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/farmer-hat-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cms.excopartners.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/farmer-hat-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cms.excopartners.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/farmer-hat.jpg 1200w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></figure></div>



<p>The Delivery phase proceeded for the Farmer Health Website and Farmer HAT product. The Delivery phase used a “Scrum” based framework for managing the software development activities. The Scrum framework is a method for breaking down large complex problems to smaller units of work that can be managed and delivered iteratively. Scrum is largely associated with “Agile” software development practices which is a method for managing software projects that promotes collaboration and flexibility over more rigid methods of traditional project management.</p>



<p>The delivery phase was structured in a series of two-week “Sprints”. Each Sprint was planned to focus on a particular set of features as were described in the User Stories. In each sprint, the User Stories in focus would progress individually through the process, as shown in the User Story Life-cycle diagram below, to progressively detail, build and test the required software.</p>



<p>The project team, comprising a blend of Exco Partners and NCFH staff, would meet each morning via video call in a “Stand-up” meeting to review the progress of the previous day, plan for the next activities and discuss challenges preventing progress. A “Kanban” was used to monitor the status of each User Story through the delivery process. A Kanban is a visual method for monitoring and managing units of work moving through a process. The Kanban, represented virtually for the project team in the Microsoft DevOps platform, was key to being able to collaborate on the project delivery with the team members needing to work remotely due to COVID.</p>



<p></p>



<p>The NCFH Farmer Health Website and Farmer HAT launched in September 2020 projected to serve over 50 thousand unique users in the first 12 months since launch and over 100 thousand page views.</p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator"/>



<ol><li>Safe work Australia. (2017) <em>Traumatic Injury Fatalities database and national Data Set for Compensation-Based Statistics</em>.</li></ol>


digital-product

National Centre for Farmer Health


<p>Join us on a webinar, presented by Tjon Kim our resident project and portfolio tooling guru, to learn about Microsoft&#8217;s new Project Accelerator tool which delivers some impressive out of the box improvements to Microsoft Project for the Web and fills some of the white space left behind from Microsoft Project Online.</p>



<p>20th May 2021, 12pm to 1pm</p>



<p>Register and more details <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/events/fasttrackprojectforthewebwithmi6792617768245166080/">here</a></p>



<p></p>


project-for-the-web

Project for the Web with Microsoft’s Project Accelerator


<p>If you have started looking at Project for the Web as Microsoft’s latest Project and Portfolio Management (PPM) Toolset and have found yourself confused, you are not alone! We&nbsp;are currently fielding lots of questions&nbsp;and there is a huge amount of chatter online.&nbsp;We thought we would share&nbsp;3 questions that we&nbsp;most are&nbsp;most commonly&nbsp;asked.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>Question 1:&nbsp;</strong><strong>Does Project for the Web integrate with Project</strong><strong>&nbsp;</strong><strong>Desktop?</strong>&nbsp;</h3>



<p>The answer here is&nbsp;<strong>no</strong>. Whilst Project for the Web does allow importing from a Microsoft Project&nbsp;Professional&nbsp;/Project Desktop (MPP) file, it is a once off import&nbsp;and doesn’t support ongoing synchronisation.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>



<p>If you would like&nbsp;the&nbsp;integration feature&nbsp;(as many of us do!), then you can vote for&nbsp;Microsoft to prioritise it in their future feature enhancements.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>



<p></p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>Question 2:&nbsp;</strong><strong>How do I navigate to Project for the Web?&nbsp;</strong>&nbsp;</h3>


<div class="wp-block-image">
<figure class="alignright size-large is-resized"><img decoding="async" loading="lazy" src="https://cms.excopartners.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/menu.png" alt="" class="wp-image-2313" width="315" height="432" srcset="https://cms.excopartners.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/menu.png 630w, https://cms.excopartners.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/menu-219x300.png 219w, https://cms.excopartners.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/menu-438x600.png 438w" sizes="(max-width: 315px) 100vw, 315px" /></figure></div>


<p>If you have ever used Project Online, you would be familiar with the Project app that shows up in the Office 365 app launcher:&nbsp;</p>



<p>How many of you tried clicking that app to get to Project for the Web? It does not&nbsp;take&nbsp;you there! That link actually takes&nbsp;you to the&nbsp;<strong>Project Home</strong>, which is a great way for seeing all Projects you are involved in. It does not matter whether they are Project for the Web Projects, or Project Online Projects. More information about this&nbsp;<a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/get-started-with-project-home-a3b38418-35e7-4df4-8e4a-ba6a4fa0562a" target="_blank">here</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>



<p>Steps to navigate to Project for the web:&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>



<ul>
<li>Go to&nbsp;<a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://make.powerapps.com/" target="_blank">https://make.powerapps.com/</a>.&nbsp;</li>



<li>Click on&nbsp;<strong>Apps</strong>&nbsp;in the left navigation panel&nbsp;</li>



<li>Click on “Project”&nbsp;</li>
</ul>



<p>Once you have done this, it is best to save the page as a favourite in your browser for easy access in the future.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>


<div class="wp-block-image">
<figure class="aligncenter size-large is-resized"><img decoding="async" loading="lazy" src="https://cms.excopartners.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/project-power-apps-1024x465.png" alt="" class="wp-image-2315" width="768" height="349" srcset="https://cms.excopartners.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/project-power-apps-1024x465.png 1024w, https://cms.excopartners.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/project-power-apps-300x136.png 300w, https://cms.excopartners.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/project-power-apps-768x349.png 768w, https://cms.excopartners.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/project-power-apps-1536x698.png 1536w, https://cms.excopartners.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/project-power-apps-2048x930.png 2048w, https://cms.excopartners.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/project-power-apps-1400x636.png 1400w, https://cms.excopartners.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/project-power-apps-800x363.png 800w" sizes="(max-width: 768px) 100vw, 768px" /></figure></div>


<p></p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>Qu</strong><strong>estion 3:</strong><strong>&nbsp;</strong><strong>Is Project for the Web just schedule</strong><strong>?&nbsp;</strong>&nbsp;</h3>



<p>The answer to this is yes and no. Whilst the out of the box Project for the Web looks skinny and focussed on the scheduling engine, Microsoft have configured tables and views in the background! (Projects, Programs, Project Request, Risks, Issues, Changes, Status Comments, just to name a few). To make them visible (plus get more functionality), Microsoft have released a&nbsp;<strong>Project Accelerator</strong>&nbsp;which helps set up the User Interface with access to these features.&nbsp;You can read about the Project Accelerator&nbsp;<a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/project-blog/introducing-the-project-accelerator/ba-p/2201000" target="_blank">here</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>



<p>Want to know more about how you can fast track Project for the Web&nbsp;with Microsoft’s&nbsp;Project Accelerator?&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>



<p>Come and join our&nbsp;<a href="https://www.linkedin.com/events/fasttrackprojectforthewebwithmi6792617768245166080/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Webinar</a>&nbsp;on the&nbsp;20<sup>th</sup>&nbsp;of May 2021.&nbsp;&nbsp; Can’t wait, or you missed the webinar? Feel free to contact us here:&nbsp;<a href="https://excopartners.com/contact" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">https://excopartners.com/contact</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>


bridge

3 things to know – Project for the Web


<h3 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>Know your audience:</strong> </h3>



<p>Get to know about your workshop participants as much as you can. Be open with the limitation of your expertise in theirs. Remember that you are there to facilitate and not to know everything. Assigning participant personas is a good way to connect you with them and help you deliver something that they are likely to feel comfortable with.</p>



<p></p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>Define objectives:</strong> </h3>



<p>Know intimately what the workshop is for, make sure that you simplify it to a couple of main objectives. Deliver to those objectives. Continue to remind your audience of the objectives to keep the workshop focused. Be mindful not over-reach and stray too far from the stated objective.</p>



<p></p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>Be structured:</strong> </h3>



<p>Take the time to organise your workshop into logical sections. Write out your agenda and allocate time for each section. Your estimate on how much time to allocate will improve with practice and experience. Plan each section with relevant materials, methods, and the roles for each participant. People will engage and contribute more in a well-structured meeting where they can easily understand their role.</p>



<p></p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>Design and test interactions</strong>: </h3>



<p>It has become more common for participants to join a workshop via audio and video channels. Prepare for this and make sure that they can still participate in workshop activities in a reliable fashion. Start early to test any communication channels prior to your workshop. Your participants&#8217; time is valuable and spending time watching you resolve technology issues is not a good use of their time.</p>



<p></p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>Get support:</strong> </h3>



<p>Make sure that you have your ‘A Team’ with you. Allocate duties so you can focus on the important aspects of facilitation and participant engagement. Consider allocating someone to scribe and keep time so you can focus on the participants. Practice with your together and discuss your roles.</p>



<p>You would be right in thinking that there is certain aspect of showmanship in facilitating a workshop. So, it is important for you to develop your own style. Most importantly though, practice, practice and practice.</p>


June 2021

National Centre for Farmer Health

Project for the Web with Microsoft’s Project Accelerator

3 things to know – Project for the Web

5 steps to confident workshop facilitation