Projecting the Future: How PushFar digitised mentoring programmes
Making mentoring more accessible and effective for everyone - by Mark Rowland.
In addition to the changes brought about by the other factors discussed as part of Projecting the Future – the fourth industrial revolution, climate change, smart technology – the skills that we all need in order to succeed in work will transform as well.
Soft skills are becoming more valuable as technical, process-based tasks become automated. People are staying put at a job for a shorter amount of time as old progression paths disappear.
Newer generations want clear career paths and development plans. At the same time, more established members of the workforce need to develop skills that cannot be taught in a one-day course.
It’s why mentorship schemes are increasing in popularity across organisations in all sectors. Mentoring offers a more nuanced, long-term approach to development. There’s also opportunities for two-way learning. It helps to increase employee retention and engagement.
“The working world is becoming more complex and there are more challenges,” says Ed Johnson, the creator of mentoring platform PushFar “People do need support more than ever before with their careers. It’s important that they have a mentor and can have real value in the experiences they share.”
However, mentoring schemes are time-consuming and difficult to run. Johnson found that himself when he tried to find a mentor to help his own career. After his research uncovered no obvious way to find a mentor, he decided to create one.
The PushFar platform launched in January last year and is now used by organisations such as The Trainline, Itsu, Lidl, WaterAid and the University of East London. “Our aim is to make mentoring more accessible and effective for everyone, and we do that with both the platform itself and a number of other things the technology we’ve developed looks at. We look at career progression as a whole, not just the idea of having a mentor or a mentee.”
The PushFar development project has been agile through and through, with continuous improvements and regular feedback from its most important stakeholders, the clients. “We have regular meetings with our clients and prospective clients about their requirements, so we can roadmap functionality that we don’t already have,” Johnson explains.
To ensure it’s meeting the requirements of all of its users, PushFar put together a Student Advisory Board to gauge their reactions to the latest developments and suggest future features. The board meets every two months for two to three hours at a time.
The idea for the Student Advisory Board came about through a client, the University of East London, which suggested that Johnson and his team get feedback from their students. That developed into the board. “It wasn’t something we set out to do, but it ended up being one of the best things we’ve ever done,” says Johnson. “It’s been so valuable for us. It gives us insight into what the future workforce is looking for in their careers.”
Planning: narrowing the idea
Johnson’s original vision for PushFar was a lot more ambitious – a single platform that gave you personalised information and recommendations on how to meet your career goals. As the planning stage of the project got underway, however, it quickly became apparent that the initial launch should be something more focused. “We needed to focus on one element of it, get something developed and launch a minimum viable product, which is when it became focused on the mentoring aspect.”
There were other functions that Johnson wanted to bring into the platform from launch or soon afterwards, so the team put together a roadmap for when different features would be introduced after the main product was completed. “We had a target date for initial testing and bug fixes. We had a timeframe around those and the initial launch phase as well. We went for a relatively soft launch.”
Johnson had a January 2019 launch date in mind. Knowing tech projects’ tendency to drift from their launch dates, he told his development team to aim for a launch date of October 2019. The tactic worked – while the PushFar platform launched at the end of January rather than the beginning, like he intended, Johnson got the result he wanted. “We were out by about a month, which, considering it’s technology, I was quite pleased with. I don’t quite know how we managed it.”
Stakeholder engagement, and managing unknown quantities
While Johnson had reached out to potential clients and gathered feedback on what they’d want from the platform, during the initial development phase of the project, the only stakeholders were the company’s investors, who Johnson says were fairly easy to manage. The key to keeping them happy, he says, was regular communication and total transparency about the state of the project throughout its development.
“It was also key that we set expectations upfront, making them aware that, while there was an urgency to get the platform launched as quickly as possible, there was no massive detriment to it overrunning slightly.”
The lack of direct client stakeholders posed the biggest challenge for Johnson and his team. While Johnson had spoken to many prospective client organisations about what they wanted from the platform, there was less on how they wanted to use it. “All of them wanted to use it in lots of different ways, so we had to develop a platform that was very flexible from day one.”
Iterative developments
“We’ve been going for just over a year now, and in that time, we’ve been adapting the platform and learning new things based on requirements,” says Johnson. “All you can do is try to predict in advance what might be needed, and once you have got users on board, that you’re really looking at what you’re doing and that you’re getting feedback regularly.”
The regular check-ins with current clients have proved to be useful steers on where the project could go next. The team also spends a lot of time with prospective clients to identify any other potential features they can develop to meet new requirements.
Managing an agile project like this is all about working out your priorities, Johnson explains – what is nice to have, features that users would love but aren’t essential, and the absolute must-haves. “It’s a juggling act that’s constantly evolving and moving.”
It’s paying off so far: “Each time we get a new client, we’ve had less and less need for custom features, because everything they need is there.”
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