myFletcher: was this product really needed?

9 min readJan 28, 2021

This article is written as an assignment for HKS Class DPI 662B: Digital Government.

ISSUE

While myFletcher may have been intended to be a time-saving and cost-saving new product by Fletcher, its rollout has received significant criticism from the student body and other stakeholders involved, which has brought to question what truly is the value proposition of myFletcher and if in fact it is needed. The main issues with myFletcher lay with its web design and value proposition. This memo aims to analyze these issues further and provide feedback that will ensure a successful user experience.

ANALYSIS

myFletcher is the first, two-factor authentication security-enabled, secure intranet platform for The Fletcher School community that was newly rolled out a few months ago — — a product that was rolled out with some high-level feedback from internal staff but no feedback from students or other major stakeholders, prior to the rollout. The myFletcher platform is bulky and unwieldly where users have had significant difficulty in locating resources they need and have been met with a lack of response or an unpleasant response from the communications team when design flaws were pointed out. Additionally, myFletcher seems to be a low value-add to the whole of the Fletcher community with the exception being new students who entered in Fall 2020 who have received some preliminary training on how to use the platform during orientation; others have not had the chance. After conducting a short survey via email, the following responses were received from students:

§ “Everything myFletcher does was already being done by another resource. All they have done is congregate everything under one umbrella and pat themselves on the back for a job well done. Go on to the website and name one thing it can do that couldn’t be just as easily accomplished before the existence of myFletcher. Then, the only function that I could imagine myFletcher serving, a discussion board for current students, hasn’t been facilitated at all by the administration. They just made the platform and assumed people will just participate because it’s there. Over the summer I complained to the administration through several different channels that their idea was a bad one, and each time I was told no it will work. I told them, if you want honest discussion you need anonymity within the discussion board. They told me to shut it.” — Bilal, second-year MALD student

§ “I had an unpleasant experience with changing my preferred name on my profile — it was grayed out and a window popped up saying I should contact a staff member if I would like to change it. Then I emailed that person as instructed, twice, and nothing happened. No emails, so notifications. It was kind of troublesome because I served as a second-year mentor during orientation and myFletcher was the primary source for the first-years.” — Anon, second-year MALD student

§ “Under Academics, the sub-categories don’t really make sense to me. Like if I’m specifically looking for course schedules by semester (beyond just this semester’s courses” it’s difficult to find.” — Anon, first-year MALD student

§ “I’ve never used a university online system/program like this one. In general terms, I am super excited! The only deficit that I think important mentioning is the fact that a) there are many pages (myFletcher, SIS, canvas, JumboSearch, Fletcher CORE, eLists) that are all operated in different pages the makes me lost.” — Anon, first-year MA student

§ “I’ve found the layout and design quite confusing — it’s definitely not very user-friendly. Since I’m already familiar with the Fletcher website (including Connect), I tend to just go directly to the website to find forms.” — Anon, second-year MALD student

§ “The only reason I go to myFletcher is to book office hours, but the platform was rolled out so late with so little coordination that this portion did more to confuse professors and office hours than to help it. Even professors say that they are confused.” — Anon, PhD student

[Note: These responses were collected between September 29–30, 2020]

Based on the survey responses, it shows that the Fletcher Communications team has not validated the myFletcher business model and has managed to alienate early adopters when the administration shunned the opportunity to receive feedback from the very customers they are trying to acquire and please. Here, the Communications team can either choose to let these complaints slide resulting in further reputational damage to the Communications team and the Fletcher administration at-large or choose to invest in a hypothesis-driven approach to make myFletcher a product that customers demand. The sections below discuss the latter option.

OBJECTIVES

First, the Communications team needs to collect feedback, good and bad, from all stakeholders of myFletcher from all informal and formal channels that they may use, including peer-to-peer conversations, emails, surveys, and focus group discussions. This can better inform the Communications team of the starting point for improvements. Second, the communications team needs to first translate its vision for myFletcher into a series of hypotheses that can be tested by way of minimum viable products (MVPs). The MVP will measure the usability, reliability, functionality, and design of myFletcher. This will help engender trust and usage compliance among from customers.

One example of a hypothesis that can be tested could be that improving the format of the Academic resource links in the web-layout of myFletcher will increase usage by all users to at least 50 percent per day. Students, faculty, and staff are thought to constitute the majority of users of the myFletcher platform and improving a functionality for them would most likely increase usage significantly. Currently, students, faculty, and staff can use the myFletcher Academic links to see the courses that pertain to specific concentrations being offered in each semester (links to fletcher.edu website has this information available publicly), post syllabuses and course shopping information (available in a MS Excel document accessible through Tufts Box which requires separate sign-in), and show the course registration deadlines (available at Tufts SIS site which requires separate sign-in). The myFletcher Academic links merely open to a different set of external sites which many users find confusing. This raises two key questions: 1) Should the myFletcher page be the one-stop shop for Academic resources, without the need for separate linking and sign-ins? 2) Why is there a need for a secure 2FA-enabled intranet platform like myFletcher when some academic information is available publicly? To answer these questions, the Communications team first, ought to invest in inter-administration coordination on the different academic portals used and second, instruct the myFletcher product manager to change the layout of the Academics link, display more detailed listings/information of the academic services on myFletcher, and make “Academics” a more prominent feature. After making these changes, the Communications team should test the viability of the MVP of improvements in the Academics resource by monitoring usage percentages for one month and seeing the results. The results should inform whether the myFletcher site and its Academic resources are working without any bugs or security loopholes. Additionally, based on the test feedback, if the usage is not at least 50 percent per day on average for the test-month, then the Communications team needs to decide on how to proceed — — it could persevere and monitor results for a second month or pivot and make some adjustments to the Academic links and layout again or abandon the plan completely.

POLICY OPTIONS

The hypothesis and MVP test in the previous section grappled with the Academics link in myFletcher and was portrayed as a micro-level consideration for improving the myFletcher product. As a consideration for myFletcher product’s value proposition as a whole, here are three policy options:

1) Full roll-back of myFletcher

Doing a full roll-back of myFletcher may help appease the second-years students, faculty, and staff at-large because this product was rolled out with little coordination with no protypes offered and attempted to fix a system that was not broken. However, given the significant monetary investments made in constructing the product and advertising it, a full rollback would not be well-received by the Dean’s office, especially if they have already sent out official communications on the introduction of myFletcher. Therefore, the more feasible option would be to keep the myFletcher product but work on improving it.

2) Keep myFletcher and make waterfall planning/development

Keeping myFletcher would be ideal for some since many new users like new students have used the product and have familiarized themselves with it through training during orientation, albeit a scant amount of training. But to increase usability, the users need to have a usable product. The waterfall planning method would divide myFletcher product development into phases such as design, coding, testing which would be completed by different administrative branches. While it is desired that this product development goes through such structured phases, a new phase in the waterfall planning scheme can be started only after the work from the previous phase undergoes a formal review. This can be very time-consuming and costly, which is why the waterfall planning method is not the most efficient and effective.

3) Keep myFletcher and do agile planning/development and incorporate feedback

Because speed, risk, and cost are some of the biggest drivers to successful product development, myFletcher product transformation should undergo agile planning. Agile would be an iterative process, which will continually test and improve the product. However, the agile process can get costly and/or unwieldly if the parameters for improvement are too broad/narrow or not well-defined in advance. But utilizing user feedback is a good way to start defining those parameters.

RECOMMENDATION

My recommendation will be to keep the myFletcher and use an agile approach to product development. The agile method has been proven to be more effective in the business context as it is: 1) lower risk since the feedback from users is received early and frequently; 2) the Communications team’s myFletcher product managers can get use this feedback to shift the goal based on feedback (e.g. persevere with the same line of strategy, pivot to revising the model, or trash the change entirely); 3) allows for more adaptive changes to the myFletcher product as halfway through the rollout of the product changes, users and product managers both know what works and what does not so that the scope can be increased or decreased.

IMPLEMENTATION

Similar to the Academics link hypothesis, the Communications team should launch a series of other micro-level hypotheses and MVPs that should be tested to see if myFletcher has a product market fit and is able to keep customers happy. This testing process could be carried out for a six-month period in total and analyze the (evolving) benchmarks and different success metrics. Each month, the Communications team can tackle a different hypothesis, but should be wary of parallel testing. If for example, the first hypothesis clearly informs the success/validity of the second hypothesis, it is better not to waste time testing those two hypotheses parallel to each other. Choosing different hypotheses would be the way to go. Even after the six-month mark, improving the myFletcher platform will be a continuous process as the product’s demise will be quick if its change management is not made a priority.

APPENDIX

A1. myFletcher product tear-down