RAP Pre-engagement Questionnaire

TLDR

These questions will help you plan out your RAP engagement.
They focus on what the current situation is, what needs doing, why, and when it will be classed as done.

Why should we care?

By thoroughly scoping out a piece of work, prior to starting, it might identify potential pitfalls, or opportunities.
This document should help RAP champions set expectations, especially when "disengaging" at the end of an engagement.

Pre-requisites

Some information on what someone might need to be familiar with before they can use this page

Pre-requisite	Importance	Note
Levels of RAP	Necessary	Knowing the levels of RAP allows you to understand what to aim for
Building Team Capability	Helpful	Provides context for this checklist: what your team will need to do RAP
Support Models	Helpful	Helps you understand the different ways in which RAP champions can help analysts do RAP
Typical Engagement Flow	Helpful	An example of how an engagement might go - might help RAP champions to plan out their own
Thin Slice Strategy	Helpful	Describes how to take an existing pipeline and remake it into a RAP

This is checklist is aimed at helping RAP Champions plan out an engagement with a team to help them make a RAP pipeline.

It's a good idea to go through this checklist with the subject matter experts of the pipeline which needs transforming, so that there are fewer surprises further down the line.

Before diving into RAP, it's highly recommended that colleagues familiarise themselves the elements of baseline RAP, and do some introductory training - this will mean any engagement will be far more efficient.

Note

See Thin slice Strategy and Typical Engagement Flow for more information on how to do engagements, support models for to resource and the trade-offs involved in RAP engagements.

Theme	Sub-theme	Question	Tips
Overall	Start point	What situation are we starting with?	How does the current process work, at the high level.
	Aim	What is the end goal?	Examples include they want to get it to baseline, and train up their team
	"The ask"	What do they need from us?	That is, why can't they do the above themselves? not enough resources, not enough skills?
	Shutdown	Who would own this once the project is over?	Good to get an idea of this right at the start - so handover is considered from day 1.
		What is the plan for ongoing support?	For example, follow up / drop-in sessions? Analysts will hit snags after the engagements - they need to know where to turn for help
Engagement model		Which type of support model? (for example, RAP team leads, analyst team leads, RAP champion)
Resource	RAP Champions	Who?	Which of your available RAP champions will be working on this? How will they balance this alongside any other commitments?
		For how long?	For how long? A default time period for engagements is 2 months, but they might need to be shorter or longer.
	Analyst team	Who?	who will be working on this project?
		What is their FTE availability and for what period of time, for instance 2 months?
		What is the level of technical skills and experience in the analyst team?	This should be related to the technology of choice (Python, SQL, and so on)
		If pre-engagement training, who, when and for how ?
		How well do the team understand the process which needs RAPifying?	For example, do they have a diagram which shows the major steps? Are technical details of those understood? Are there any black boxes?
		What happens after the engagement finishes?	(Hint: hopefully they will train others and make more pipelines
		Pair programming?	Pair programming means two people working together on one task. This sounds wasteful, but can result in better code being written, and more learning taking place.
	Both	Upcoming deadlines for non-RAP stuff?	Other deadlines might derail the RAP work - so good to know about them
Support from other teams	Data Management	Is the pipeline that makes the "base asset" trusted and assured?	The RAP will consume and build on the "base asset" table - if this isn't assured, then the RAP outputs won't be assured.
		Do we have access to data management SMEs?
	Information Asset Owners	Good to know who these people are in case there are any issues with the data, or if more info is needed on its providence, use, etc.
Existing pipeline / publication	Access	What is needed to get access to any of the required data, storage and systems?	We need to arrange access promptly.
		Any other access requirements?	Such as network drives, fileshares, gitlab repos, etc.
	Information governance	What direction is this done under? Which Unified Register asset numbers are used?
	Platform	Which analytical environment are they using?	We need to know what tools and setup they're using.
		Longevity of the Platform?	Is this platform sticking around? Is there a more future proof one you could use?
		Plan in place for future moves to new analytical environments?	Have they thought what will happen when eventually the current environment is replaced?
	Outputs	Excel outputs, CSVs (do they follow Open Data Standards for CSVs?	This is important for consistency, to allow easier reuse
	Existing Work	Any other RAP pipelines in the team?	These can act as a useful template.
		Can the RAP package template be used?	This is a great starting point to ensure your work is consistent with that of your colleagues.
	Thin slice	What will the measures and breakdowns (if applicable!) be? Or otherwise, how could you chunk up the work into the thin slice approach?

RAP Pre-engagement Questionnaire

Further Reading