Remote instrument health
Project summary
For several decades, Tracerco has been selling radiation-based measurement instrumentation into industrial processes. This equipment is often installed and left to run continuously for 20+ years. Support for instrumentation is traditionally reactive, involving expensive engineer deployments to customer sites.
This project aimed to develop a more modern support service built around remote, continuous monitoring of equipment in the field. This would offer pro-active rather than reactive maintenance and minimise client costs through remote interventions.
Building consensus
Remote monitoring had been an idea within the business for many years, but with no business appetite to tackle the problem. In late 2022 I organised and facilitated a Design Sprint with cross-business stakeholders to frame the problem and explore solutions with customers.
The key sprint findings were:
The cost to customer of bringing our engineers on site for instrument calibrations is very high
Customers largely ignore our instrumentation until it stops working correctly, even if measurement performance is degraded
Service contracts including remote monitoring and site visit costs built-in would be attractive to customers and in line with other equipment they own
The follow up project was approved in 2024 following a direct customer interest in monitoring remote equipment for an unmanned oil platform.
Understanding the problem
Prior to beginning development I led a discovery phase with business stakeholders consisting of a number of facilitated workshops. This involved a deep dive into the architecture of the businesses we work with and our interactions with them before, during and after sales.
From this I presented a detailed report including:
Stakeholder map
Key user personas relevant to instrument support
User journey maps for installation, commissioning and post-installation support
The report also included key observations and opportunities to add value through a digital platform and support service.
Product ownership
During development I took on the role of product owner, managing and translating information between a senior commercial lead and the engineering team. This included:
Defining and refining value propositions
Creating and managing feature roadmap
Prioritising development features and scoping delivery phases
Creating backlog items and running refinements with the software team
Driving backlog prioritisation sprint-to-sprint
During this time I made several improvements to the way we structured and organised backlogs in Microsoft DevOps, making it easier to manage committed work, whilst also developing roadmap ideas. This improved clarity for the software team, helping them to execute more efficiently.
Design system pioneering
Starting this project provided the best opportunity for me to begin integrating a Design System for web platforms. This project was running in parallel with an established web platform that was due a UI refresh. Having both platforms in active development meant that new components could be built for the green-field project and then shared with the established platform. Likewise, the older platform provided challenging use cases to help shape the consistent component set and design patterns required by the design system.
This piece of work accelerated the design work we were able to produce in Figma through component re-use and raised the overall quality of user interface and interactions on both projects and was enthusiastically adopted by the software team.
User testing and iteration
Phase 1 of the project focussed mainly on Tracerco-facing tools aimed at entering and maintaining instrument system data. This included workflows for bulk upload of technical documentation.
During this phase, I ran a number of usability testing sessions with engineers and project controllers to test the workflows we had implemented. These took the form of observed usability tests, both in-person and remotely, with developers as observers.
Following these tests I provided thorough test reports with recommendations for fixes and improvements. I then added these tasks to software backlogs and prioritised them against ongoing work.
Outcomes
This project has just ended its first phase of development successfully. The web application is being made available to Tracerco users in order to begin populating instrument data.
Connectivity to remote instrumentation has been through a proof of concept and the business is now looking to begin trialling connectivity with live customer instruments.
The project is planned to start phase 2 of development, so I have been running a discovery programme to gather direct feedback from customers to tackle the challenges of adoption, including:
Technical barriers to sharing data such as security concerns and integration with existing infrastructure
Understanding willingness to pay for longer term support packages with services enhanced by data sharing
Towards this I have been refining designs for customer-facing parts of the software in order to better illustrate the value offered by a connected system and to provoke useful conversations with customers.
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