Don't touch the monolith; or, How lateral architecture design can satisfy your users

Research shows that prisoners’ reoffending rates are significantly lowered if they have frequent contact with friends and family on the outside. Booking social visits with prisoners used to involve mailing a paper form to the visitor, who would then have to phone the prison—and could spend two hours or more on hold. In September 2014, the Ministry of Justice Digital launched Prison Visit Booking, which allows visits with prisoners to be booked online through GOV.UK.

How can you integrate with an unchangeable monolith that thousands of prison staff use every day to run the UK’s prisons, while rapidly iterating on a citizen-facing visit booking service?

Steve Marshall shows how a combination of some decades-old technologies, a carefully crafted user interface, and staff in prisons made it possible to build a visit-booking service with 90% user satisfaction, all without changing the backend system. Steve also explores how to architect systems to chip away at legacy monoliths while improving your users’ experience and discusses what all of this means for how you architect your systems.

Transcript

1. Don’t touch the monolith Or: How lateral architecture design can satisfy your users @SteveMarshall, Technical Architect
2. @SteveMarshall MOJ The Government Digital Service
3. @SteveMarshall MOJ Digital services so good people prefer to use them
4. @SteveMarshall MOJ
5. @SteveMarshall MOJ
6. @SteveMarshall MOJ
7. @SteveMarshall MOJ Prison visit booking
8. @SteveMarshall MOJ Why are prison visits important?
9. @SteveMarshall MOJ 45%
 of prisoners lose contact with their family while inside
10. @SteveMarshall MOJ 39%
 more likely to reoffend if not visited
11. @SteveMarshall MOJ
12. I’ve rang over 50 times and can’t get through @SteveMarshall MOJ ” “
13. Get more staff on the phones it's ridiculous!!!! @SteveMarshall MOJ ” “
14. @SteveMarshall MOJ gov.uk/prison-visits
15. @SteveMarshall MOJ
16. @SteveMarshall MOJ 1.5m
 bookings online And 50% of all bookings are now online
17. @SteveMarshall MOJ 65%
 of online bookings from mobiles or tablets
18. @SteveMarshall MOJ 80%
 completion rate
19. @SteveMarshall MOJ 85%
 user satisfaction* * including rejected bookings
20. @SteveMarshall MOJ Visit web UI Visit Database
21. @SteveMarshall MOJ Prison Database ? ? Visit web UI
22. @SteveMarshall MOJ Prison Database ? ? Visit web UI
23. @SteveMarshall MOJ Visit web UI Prison Database ? ?
24. @SteveMarshall MOJ API n. an FTP folder with a 10 minute response time
25. @SteveMarshall MOJ Visit web UI Prison Database 10m
26. @SteveMarshall MOJ 0.1s: instantaneous 1s: operating directly on the data 10s: the limit for keeping the user's attention —“Usability Engineering”, Jakob Nielsen
27. @SteveMarshall MOJ 0.1s: instantaneous 1s: operating directly on the data 10s: the limit for keeping the user's attention —“Usability Engineering”, Jakob Nielsen 10m: ???
28. @SteveMarshall MOJ Visit web UI Prison Database 10m
29. @SteveMarshall MOJ Visit web UI Prison Database 10m
30. @SteveMarshall MOJ Visit web UI Prison Database 10m
31. @SteveMarshall MOJ Cue pre-caching of availability, machine learning to predict busy periods…
32. @SteveMarshall MOJ Visit web UI Prison Database 10m
33. @SteveMarshall MOJ Visit web UI Prison Database 10m
34. @SteveMarshall MOJ
35. @SteveMarshall MOJ Visit web UI Prison Database 10m
36. @SteveMarshall MOJ Visit web UI Prison Database Prison Database
37. @SteveMarshall MOJ Visit web UI Prison Database Prison Database
38. @SteveMarshall MOJ Use low- or no-tech solutions first
39. @SteveMarshall MOJ Satisfying the user’s need doesn’t have to be instant, it has to fit into their day
40. @SteveMarshall MOJ Other services with low-tech solutions
41. @SteveMarshall MOJ
42. @SteveMarshall MOJ
43. @SteveMarshall MOJ
44. @SteveMarshall MOJ Address the user need first, worry about the tech later
45. @SteveMarshall MOJ What next for prison visits?
46. gradually create a new system around the edges of the old […] until the old system is strangled @SteveMarshall MOJ ” “ – Martin Fowler
47. @SteveMarshall MOJ Visit web UI Prison Database Prison Database
48. @SteveMarshall MOJ Visit web UI Prison Database Prison Database Visit API
49. @SteveMarshall MOJ Visit web UI Prison Database Prison Database Visit API
50. @SteveMarshall MOJ Visit web UI Visit API Prison Database
51. @SteveMarshall MOJ Visit web UI Visit API Visit staff UI Prison Database
52. @SteveMarshall MOJ Visit web UI Visit staff UI Prison Database Visit API
53. @SteveMarshall MOJ Visit web UI Visit staff UI Prison Database Visit API
54. @SteveMarshall MOJ Visit web UI Visit staff UI Prison Database Visit API Another API
55. @SteveMarshall MOJ Build strangler applications
56. @SteveMarshall MOJ What have we learned?
57. @SteveMarshall MOJ Build strangler applications
58. @SteveMarshall MOJ Use low- or no-tech solutions first
59. @SteveMarshall MOJ Address the user need first, and worry about the tech later
60. Don’t touch the monolith Or: How lateral architecture design can satisfy your users tinyurl.com/stevemarshall-monolith @SteveMarshall, Technical Architect
61. @SteveMarshall MOJ References - gov.uk/transformation - gov.uk/register-to-vote - gov.uk/carers-allowance - gov.uk/prison-visits - thinknpc.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/Investing-in-family-ties.pdf - webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20110201125714/http:/www.justice.gov.uk/ publications/docs/research-factors-reoffending.pdf - gov.uk/performance/prison-visits - nngroup.com/articles/response-times-3-important-limits/ - duolingo.com / wikipedia.org/wiki/Duolingo#Crowdsourced_translation - stripe.com / stripe.com/atlas / paulgraham.com/ds.html - zappos.com / businessinsider.com/nick-swinmurn-zappos-rnkd-2011-11 - martinfowler.com/bliki/StranglerApplication.html