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

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