PART 1

Customer/User Job-to-be-Done or Problem

As a Program Owner/institutional researcher/leader, I want to be able to gauge how aligned my programs are with in-demand careers and identify opportunities to strengthen my program offerings to more effectively prepare learners with skills needed to succeed in their career.

As an institution purchasing this capability, I have reservations about the level of effort,  corresponding timeline, and complexity that I perceive is required with the current Skillabi solution. My institution (likely) already has users on the Analyst platform and would have fewer reservations about a “lightweight” approach to curriculum alignment accessible via the Analyst platform. 

Value to Customers & Users

Through this phase of work (Phase 1), we will confirm the value to customers/users of integrating key Skillabi capabilities into Analyst, starting with goals to provide…

• Greater accessibility to program skills insights and market alignment for institutions who are not able to invest significant resources in full Skillabi

• Ability to get to insights more quickly, without reliance on collection of extensive syllabi docs and faculty review/validation

Streamlined process for Analyst/Skillabi users, to not need to switch between platforms to use both in combination.

Value to Lightcast

• Removed reliance on maintaining highly resource intensive processes. Resource requirements are intensive...

  • To buyers/customers to provide curricular materials and vet the quality of skill tagging

  • To Lightcast-internal product data operations teams to process, skills tag, and set up relationships between curricular materials

  • To Lightcast-internal engineering teams to support multiple software platforms and technology stacks

• Ability to integrate more closely with primary/core tool, taking steps towards modularizing Analyst for EDU products

• Connect career and education insights more seamlessly for institutions, rather than encouraging multiple standalone processes 

• Encourage cross-selling by connecting more closely with Analyst users

• Potentially build faster by leveraging existing Analyst capabilities and data connections for new features as applicable
  
  

Target User Role/Client/Client Category

Target User: Institution program owners, researchers, and leaders who are involved in…

• Program review across multiple programs, with consideration of alignment to labor market needs over time

• New program development and repurposing of content across programs

Target institutions that have or are building a “skills culture”, meaning they have some buy-in across the org for aligning their program to skills and strengthening their offerings based on skills needed.

Delivery Mechanism

New platform will be delivered as a module in the Analyst platform. Once built, we plan to begin moving current and future buyers to the new module on the Analyst platform.

Success Criteria & Metrics

Definition of Done

• Full Scope of Analyst Integration Project: Successful integration of Skillabi into Analyst platform (by approx end of 2023), refreshed and aligned to refined value props of Skillabi Module.

• PI-4: Confirm use cases, core features, and customer tiers (if applicable) and build out a set of possible designs including scoping and grooming issues for integration work beginning in PI-5. 

  • PI4 Models Team: Pull ~5 examples of CIP codes populated into the taught skills in Skillabi. [estimated size S]

    • Research a method for pulling “typical taught skills” for those institutions before they load in their curricular content, as a teaser/draw into Skillabi. Populate typical taught skills for institutions’ programs, based on:

      • Skills extracted from the associated program’s CIP code description

      • Skills associated from aggregated course content in Lightcast’s database, matched to the program’s name/CIP code.

PI-4 Dependencies: 

• Engineering leadership resources to scope and map out new direction

• Timely access to institutions/accounts for research purposes when scoping

PI-4 Success Metrics:

• Scoped with prototypes, and begun grooming work that can begin in PI-5

• Customer feedback validates our proposed integration plans and priorities

Aspects that are out of scope (of this phase)

PI-4 is a scoping, research, and design phase. Later phases will begin buildout of the new module in Analyst.

PART 2

Solution Description

This first phase will address key questions through internal scoping and market/user research. 

Sprint 1-2 Questions to answer:

• Use cases and value

  • What are the priority use cases to design this new module for? What are we hearing from customers/accounts that confirm these use case priorities?

  • What is our new North Star for Skillabi and how do we define success?

  • What aspects of the product’s current functionality center on these use cases?

  • What new features and/or alterations to current Skillabi should we prioritize introducing in the Analyst module?

  • What components to prioritize now vs. post-launch?

• Optimal detail/granularity and tiers

  • How beneficial would a lighter version of skill insights be to users? 

    • I.e., will program-level insights be enough? 

    • Likelihood to use and adopt with varying levels of skill depth?

    • In what ways would institutions use the tool with different granularity?

  • What would a tiered version look like, where each tier aligns with a customer segment and use?

    • How can we design tiers to encourage the option to “level up” with a more granular version?

  • What to show in Skillabi? Hide the text we’re skill tagging from users?

• Process and workflow

  • How do Analyst users currently interact with institution specific program pages? What do they look to do?

    • How might they view skills-based insights from within Analyst?

    • What information about programs and program skills are users seeking when engaging in Analyst?

    • To what degree would enabling institutions to act on insights with recommendations be beneficial to institutions?

  • How do we understand connectivity to outcomes, and potential map outcomes to programs?

    • How might we differentiate the ways in which each program accomplishes different career outcomes?

    • How might we leverage Analyst data to show why the set of skills taught is valuable to the learner? 

• Technical constraints

  • What are the primary technical platform limitations and constraints to consider? Do these constraints rule out any avenues?

  • How might each of the tiers/proposed solutions impact resources required for implementation and ongoing skill tagging? (CDOT)

  • How might we build for a seamless near-term transition, while continuing to invest in data quality for curriculum skills? Confirm interest in supporting this ongoing investment at Lightcast.

Sprint 3 user experience questions to be determined at a later date.

Early UX (wireframes or mockups)

na

Non-Functional Attributes & Usage Projections

na

Dependencies

This initiative will require investment of input and resources from a number of teams: engineering, product/design for research and testing, account management and sales for customer perspective on use cases and prototypes.

Legal and Ethical Considerations

No legal or ethical concerns.

High-Level Rollout Strategies

• TBD

Open Questions

What are you still looking to resolve?

Complete with Engineering Teams

Estimated Costs

Direct Financial Costs

Are there direct costs that this feature entails? Dataset acquisition, server purchasing, software licenses, etc.?

Team Effort

Each team involved should give a general t-shirt size estimate of their work involved. As the epic proceeds, they can add a link to the Jira epic/issue associated with their portion of this work.