Discovery for Public Sector Digital Services - Two day training course
Designing public services that actually work is hard. It means understanding the behaviours and needs of a range of service users, then assembling the right mix of people, technology and process to meet those needs, often with limited resources and pressure to deliver quickly.
The discovery phase is there for a reason. It’s not a box to be ticked before you get started on the ‘real work’. It’s the foundation for success.
Every page you build, every process you design, every trade off you make should be informed by the work done in discovery. Because it’s only in discovery that you can dedicate your full attention to understanding the problem you are working on and where you need to focus.
If you get discovery right, decisions become easier, stakeholders agree more, teams collaborate better, and both your users, and the organisation you work for stand a better chance of building something that actually works.
Who is this course for?
This is for people embarking on a public sector digital service transformation project, with the intention of following the approach outlined in the GDS Service Manual.
It’s for those who will either sponsor, lead or contribute to the discovery process - be they Service Managers, Product Managers / Owners, Delivery Managers or other members of a multidisciplinary team.
What will I learn?
Our aim is to enable you to go back to your organisation and run a successful discovery phase. We’ll cover:
What the discovery phase is for and how it fits into the wider GDS process
How to prepare for a discovery phase - the team, tools and information needed to make a good start
The fundamental questions you need to answer in discovery
How to plan your work and choose research methods
How to work as an agile team in discovery
How to use your research data to generate useful models of user needs and behaviours How to explore policy and technology constraints that will affect the design of your new service
How to create a service vision and set of guiding principles
How to sketch and scope your new service using User Story Mapping
How to capture and prioritise risky assumptions associated with your new service design
How to design experiments to test different kinds of assumptions
How to prepare for the Alpha phase
How will I learn?
The course is delivered through a series of interactive sessions, each addressing a different each stage in the discovery process, from gathering the team, to conducting research, to preparing for the Alpha phase.
Each session introduces new concepts, provides examples and involves exercises that support learning.
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Private training and coaching
We can provide onsite training and bespoke training in product management, user centered design for teams and individuals. Please contact us to discuss.