The Government of Canada last week launched its new Digital Transformation Canada initiative. Virginia announced their new digital service team. New York City created its first PIT crews. Other governments at all levels are spinning up teams.

A lot has been written about this genre of team in recent months: why, why not, how. Here’s my first $0.02.

A lot of expectations are laid on these teams’ shoulders from the get-go. The mandate is often something close to “improve how our entire government does service delivery using technology.” (No problem, we’ll get that done by next Thursday.)

On top of that, there are a lot of voices with a lot of opinions and demands and questions and feelings about these nascent teams, and sometimes a lot of hands pulling them in a lot of directions.

Having been through this particular form of inception a couple times, and having had good seats to observe a bunch more, I pulled together some notes on the process. And last year, while I was working with a government halfway around the world, those notes turned into the curriculum for a three-day crash course in how to set up a new DS team for success.

You might think it starts with prioritization, or a budget, or org planning, or legislation.

It doesn’t.

It starts with ecosystem mapping: getting your situational bearings by mapping out all the players on the board across your government who are stakeholders, and understanding their responsibilities, authorities, budgets, incentives, concerns.

  • Who and what don’t you know yet?
  • Who/what could derail your mission?
  • Who are your allies/supporters?
  • Whose help will you need?
  • Who thinks you might move their cheese?
  • What do they need and care about?
  • What are these people/teams’ deadlines and important calendar moments to be aware of?

Don’t skimp on this mapping. It’ll help you with everything else you’re trying to do. And if you don’t do it before you turn to setting priorities, you’ll be revisiting that prioritization every time you learn something about your ecosystem that you should’ve sussed out at the start.

(H/t Simon Wardley, who tried to teach us this lesson early on at 18F)