Digital product management under extreme uncertainty: The Singapore tracetogether story for COVID-19 contact tracing (B)
This case depicts Singapore’s TraceTogether (TT) story, beginning in early 2020 when COVID-19 was spreading globally with ravaging effects. TT was the world’s first national application of a digital contact-tracing tool. Remarkably, the initial version of TT was developed and launched in just eight...
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sg-smu-ink.cases_coll_all-14042023-07-17T05:26:23Z Digital product management under extreme uncertainty: The Singapore tracetogether story for COVID-19 contact tracing (B) WONG, Yuet Nan CHEAH, Sin Mei MILLER, Steven M. This case depicts Singapore’s TraceTogether (TT) story, beginning in early 2020 when COVID-19 was spreading globally with ravaging effects. TT was the world’s first national application of a digital contact-tracing tool. Remarkably, the initial version of TT was developed and launched in just eight weeks. The increasing adoption of TT (both as a mobile app and as a hardware token) enabled the early identification and isolation of infected cases much faster than manual tracing. Part A of the case covers the related events and decision-making until the launch of the TT app on 20 March 2020. Part B covers the subsequent development efforts, version upgrades, follow-on releases and other issues until November 2021. The ability of the Government Technology Agency of Singapore (GovTech) to respond quickly to this unforeseen crisis was germinated about 7 years prior. Chan Cheow Hoe, Deputy CEO led the transition to a bimodal IT organisation which was internally capable of exploratory and rapid software development, and recently Jason Bay, Senior Director, led the overall effort to create and launch the TT app. As Singapore’s COVID-19 situation was changing dynamically, so were the national response policies and the TT app. In August 2021, government officials announced that Singapore would begin the adjustment of living with COVID-19 as an endemic. Yet, as of November 2021, the situation was still highly volatile with the emergence of the Omicron variant. To this end, what would the future hold for TT? Should the health authority sunset TT to assuage concerns of national surveillance? Should they encourage the population to keep using TT as uncertainties remained due to the emergence of new COVID-19 variants? Could a subset of TT’s capabilities be repurposed for other national initiatives? What new types of foundational capabilities and supporting infrastructure should GovTech start putting in place now to prepare in advance for the next big unknown? Students should be able to utilise the concept of a bimodal organisation for building a Mode 2 organisation for exploratory software development, adopt the Digital Product Management framework for software development, and apply the transformational leadership style for leading organizations during uncertain times. This case is suitable for undergraduate, post-graduate and executive education courses on Information Technology management, digital product management and digital transformation. 2022-02-01T08:00:00Z text https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/cases_coll_all/407 https://smu.sharepoint.com/sites/admin/CMP/cases/SMU-21-BATCH%20%5BPDF-Pic%5D/SMU-21-0045%20%5BTraceTogether%5D/SMU-21-0045%20%5BTraceTogether%20B%5D.pdf?CT=1645455485743&OR=ItemsView Case Collection eng Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University Product Management Agile project management Experimentation Digital Transformation Government Pandemic Asian Studies Databases and Information Systems Public Health Technology and Innovation |
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Product Management Agile project management Experimentation Digital Transformation Government Pandemic Asian Studies Databases and Information Systems Public Health Technology and Innovation WONG, Yuet Nan CHEAH, Sin Mei MILLER, Steven M. Digital product management under extreme uncertainty: The Singapore tracetogether story for COVID-19 contact tracing (B) |
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This case depicts Singapore’s TraceTogether (TT) story, beginning in early 2020 when COVID-19 was spreading globally with ravaging effects. TT was the world’s first national application of a digital contact-tracing tool. Remarkably, the initial version of TT was developed and launched in just eight weeks. The increasing adoption of TT (both as a mobile app and as a hardware token) enabled the early identification and isolation of infected cases much faster than manual tracing.
Part A of the case covers the related events and decision-making until the launch of the TT app on 20 March 2020. Part B covers the subsequent development efforts, version upgrades, follow-on releases and other issues until November 2021.
The ability of the Government Technology Agency of Singapore (GovTech) to respond quickly to this unforeseen crisis was germinated about 7 years prior. Chan Cheow Hoe, Deputy CEO led the transition to a bimodal IT organisation which was internally capable of exploratory and rapid software development, and recently Jason Bay, Senior Director, led the overall effort to create and launch the TT app.
As Singapore’s COVID-19 situation was changing dynamically, so were the national response policies and the TT app. In August 2021, government officials announced that Singapore would begin the adjustment of living with COVID-19 as an endemic. Yet, as of November 2021, the situation was still highly volatile with the emergence of the Omicron variant.
To this end, what would the future hold for TT? Should the health authority sunset TT to assuage concerns of national surveillance? Should they encourage the population to keep using TT as uncertainties remained due to the emergence of new COVID-19 variants? Could a subset of TT’s capabilities be repurposed for other national initiatives? What new types of foundational capabilities and supporting infrastructure should GovTech start putting in place now to prepare in advance for the next big unknown?
Students should be able to utilise the concept of a bimodal organisation for building a Mode 2 organisation for exploratory software development, adopt the Digital Product Management framework for software development, and apply the transformational leadership style for leading organizations during uncertain times. This case is suitable for undergraduate, post-graduate and executive education courses on Information Technology management, digital product management and digital transformation. |
format |
text |
author |
WONG, Yuet Nan CHEAH, Sin Mei MILLER, Steven M. |
author_facet |
WONG, Yuet Nan CHEAH, Sin Mei MILLER, Steven M. |
author_sort |
WONG, Yuet Nan |
title |
Digital product management under extreme uncertainty: The Singapore tracetogether story for COVID-19 contact tracing (B) |
title_short |
Digital product management under extreme uncertainty: The Singapore tracetogether story for COVID-19 contact tracing (B) |
title_full |
Digital product management under extreme uncertainty: The Singapore tracetogether story for COVID-19 contact tracing (B) |
title_fullStr |
Digital product management under extreme uncertainty: The Singapore tracetogether story for COVID-19 contact tracing (B) |
title_full_unstemmed |
Digital product management under extreme uncertainty: The Singapore tracetogether story for COVID-19 contact tracing (B) |
title_sort |
digital product management under extreme uncertainty: the singapore tracetogether story for covid-19 contact tracing (b) |
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Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University |
publishDate |
2022 |
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https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/cases_coll_all/407 https://smu.sharepoint.com/sites/admin/CMP/cases/SMU-21-BATCH%20%5BPDF-Pic%5D/SMU-21-0045%20%5BTraceTogether%5D/SMU-21-0045%20%5BTraceTogether%20B%5D.pdf?CT=1645455485743&OR=ItemsView |
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