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Product

Ad Hoc’s product practice helps government build the right things, in the right ways.

We do this by working with our customers to measure success in outcomes, rather than output. Our product approach uses agile and human-centered design principles to understand problems and shape solutions. We start by defining the problem and use discovery techniques like formative user research and prototyping to broaden our understanding and explore solutions. All of this is guided by a customer-designated Product Owner, who helps us manage priorities and what we learn from users along the way.

Ad Hoc product managers often play the role of servant leader, strategist, and coach. They help drive products and experiences forward based on the needs of people, rather than requirements.

Product team skills

  • Project kickoffs
  • Discovery and ideation workshops
  • Rapid prototyping
  • MVP definition
  • Goal setting and KPI definition
  • Roadmap planning
  • Product backlog development
  • User story generation
  • Product insights and reporting
  • Product owner training
  • Agile and human-centered design training

Product Principles

  • We view our work as a service design challenge, not a technology problem.
  • We define success in terms of outcomes for people, not output delivered.
  • We leverage agile and user-centered design principles to discover solutions, rather than work towards predefined requirements.
  • We work cross-functionally from start to finish towards shared outcomes, rather than in siloed phases.
  • We empower clients to own and evolve what we deliver.

Our Product team

We’re hiring

We’re looking for technologists with a wide range of skills and experiences to join our team. Find your place today.

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Recent Product posts

What it's like to be a product manager at Ad Hoc

January 13, 2021

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We’re looking for people at all levels of experience who are interested in solving hard problems and helping organizations adopt more iterative and human-centered ways of working.

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The new Ad Hoc Government Digital Services Playbook

August 18, 2020

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The 2020 version is now a standalone playbook that any federal agency can use to replace enterprise software with proven techniques from the world of commercial software.

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What does product thinking look like at Search.gov?

June 30, 2020

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Search.gov is an enormous opportunity to improve interactions between government and the people it serves. However, like any tech product, there is more to build than we have resources for.

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Four myths about applying human-centered design to government digital services

February 20, 2020

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While human-centered design (HCD) is gaining traction, its underlying concepts are sometimes misunderstood. This can mislead teams into thinking they’re working in a human-centered way when in fact, their work is largely driven by requirements.

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Launching a government MVP in less than a month

October 01, 2019

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On behalf of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, we recently launched a site for insurance issuers. We went from zero lines of code to a production MVP serving pilot users in under a month.

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The 21st Century IDEA Act Playbook Part 2: Search, security, and serving users

August 21, 2019

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In this section, I’ll continue looking at the IDEA Act’s new requirements for public websites and digital services, including a deep dive into what it means to design services around the needs of your users.

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