Service Design Phases
Taken from U.K. Gov Service Manual Phases
Discovery Phase
Objectives
- workshops
- simple mock ups
- paper prototypes
- plenty of whiteboard diagrams
The team
- A small team (stakeholders, core team members/service manager)
Timescales
- The phase should not take longer than 4 to 8 weeks. During the final week you should be setting up the broad scope of a project and an initial set of user stories (also known as a backlog) to work to. This is known as an ‘inception’. At the end of the phase a decision should be made whether to proceed to the alpha phase.
Outputs
- a prioritised list of user needs
- a prioritised list of story cards to feed into project teams
- understanding of team and capability required to complete the project
- ability to scope and plan an alpha
- a decision to progress to next phase
- maybe some rough prototypes
- maybe some user personas
- a list of stakeholders and input from them about existing services
- understanding of existing services, including those run by non-government sources
- understanding of how many of your users will need assisted digital support, and what their user needs are
Alpha Phase
The objective is to build a working prototype. This will be used by stakeholders or a closed group of end users to:
- gain greater understanding of a service
- test design approach
- test some technologies
- begin to form the team
- gain shared understanding of the service at a coding and integrations level
- understand what or who you will need to deliver a beta
What should be in your alpha? Think of it as a proof of concept:
- is the solution appropriate?
- is your approach viable?
- do you have enough understanding of your users’ needs to meet them?
- If not, find out more and make a new prototype.
Duration
- 2 months, running in week-long sprints over a 6 to 8 week period.
Team Requirements
- Small core team
Outputs
- high level story cards
- plan for beta and running of the live service (decreasingly detailed)
- working basic system that provides limited functionality that can be shown to a number of users
- understanding around legacy systems to replace or wrap or integrate with
- cross-functional requirements
- decision to progress to beta phase
- final analysis on the research you have commissioned on user needs
- options for the assisted digital support for your service
Beta
Outputs
- delivered a (private or public) end-to-end prototype of the service
- a collection of prioritised work to be done (your backlog)
- a user testing plan
- accurate metrics and measurements to monitor your KPIs
- tested the assisted digital support for your service
- a working system that can be used, for real, by end users