Image showing icons and imagery demonstrating the end of a sprint. Includes logos for Luton Council and Netcall, creator of Liberty Create, along with the words: end of sprint 1 – bringing Liberty Create to life for Luton’s CRM and digital services.
It’s been a practical sprint, getting the essentials in place so the team can build quickly to a good standard and so our first services don’t start life as one-offs.
What Sprint 1 has focused on
Sprint 1 has been about getting the platform ready for real delivery. We’ve focused on:
- identity and access
- the early building blocks of our application structure
- the start of a shared look-and-feel
It’s been an exciting week, with that real sense that the time we invest now will pay dividends later by making every future app quicker to build, easier to support, and more consistent for both residents and staff.
What we’ve delivered so far
- Established the team rhythm. We’re doing stand-ups three days a week, with the core group working closely across platform, security, and build standards.
- Created the ‘hub’ CRM (customer relationship management) app, along with the mechanics for sharing data with the ‘spoke’ apps around it. This is the foundation for connected journeys and a single resident view, rather than fragmented information in separate tools.
- Single sign-on (SSO) is in place, giving colleagues a secure and seamless way into the platform.
- Active Directory (AD) groups are set up to control role-based access (RBAC), so we can manage permissions consistently. We’re also making sure it can be administered by first line support, in line with other applications in our estate.
- The sub-domain is in place, so our apps sit under a clear luton.gov.uk address.
- We’ve created a couple of reusable forms so we can capture consistent information across services without rebuilding the basics each time. Forms include equalities data collection and feedback.
What’s well underway
- Styling for both internal and external pages, so that staff tools and resident-facing services feel cohesive and recognisably ‘Luton’.
- Our Blueprint app is taking shape, acting as both a practical style guide and a starter kit for new builds.
- Sample emails for standard communications, application submitted, additional information required, application complete.
The Blueprint app: a style guide you can copy and paste
One of the most valuable things we can build early is something we can reuse. The Blueprint app is deliberately dual-purpose and:
- shows ‘this is what good looks like’ in practice
- provides ready-made pages and components that developers can duplicate and adapt
Done well, this becomes a practical style guide. It should help us, from day one to:
- move faster
- reduce avoidable variation
- bake in things like accessibility, content standards and testing expectations
Over time, it’ll grow as we learn. Every new capability should add a pattern into the Blueprint so the next project starts further ahead.
The team is starting to form
The other big change this sprint is that the work is no longer ‘set-up and owned by a few people’. More colleagues are involved day to day, we’re unblocking each other quickly and decisions are being made together.
That rhythm matters. It’s how we keep momentum, share knowledge, and stop key parts of the platform becoming single points of failure.
What happens next
- Finish hardening identity and access. Tighten RBAC, confirm how we manage roles over time, and make sure audit and support processes are clear.
- Get a first cut of styling to ‘done’ for both internal and external apps, so we can start building journeys without revisiting the basics each time.
- Publish version 1 of the Blueprint app and start using it as the default starting point for new builds.
- Begin delivering our first end-to-end journeys on the platform, proving the full path from online transaction through to case management.
- Keep building out the playbook. This includes patterns, naming conventions, accessibility and content standards, testing expectations, and release and support processes.
In other news
I met with our CEO, Mark Fowler, this week. We had a good chat about the platform and he posed a simple question. How does this help support Luton 2040? It’s a great question, and I’m going to unpack it properly in my next blog post.
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