Create digital teams

There should be a single empowered service owner who has the authority to make all business, product and technical decisions about a service. 

The same person is accountable and responsible for how well the service meets the needs of its users, which is how its success will be evaluated. 

Find out more about service owners at GOV.UK. 

Why this is important  

A service owner is responsible for the end-to-end service, which may include many products and digital and offline channels. 

A few people might be responsible for a service but a single person must be empowered to represent the needs of users. 

How to get started  

You should: 

• make sure senior leaders are committed to digital ways of working and that this commitment is communicated from the top down – the value of digital ways of working needs to be recognised at all levels in the organisation 
• identify a service owner – this might be a senior leader within an organisation who is responsible for managing the end-to-end service including several products and channels 
• be clear about the outcomes of the service and its benefits to users and the organisation 
  make sure there’s a roadmap for the service and appropriate funding in place to allow the team to meet user needs 

Teams are how we build services. Each one should be a diverse mix of people, experience, expertise and disciplines.  

As well as having the right mix of skills and experience for each stage of designing and building the service, your team should be able to change over time. 

You also need to know how much a team responsible for continuous improvement of the service would cost. 

Why this is important  

You’ll need the right skills within the team to make effective decisions and deliver quickly. 

It is not always possible to have dedicated roles when organisations are starting out on their digital journey. But it’s important to understand the diverse range of skills needed at different stages of development.  

This will include a mix of digital skills, such as:  

• user research 
• service design 
• content design  
• product management 

You’ll also need subject matter experts. These could be business or legal experts, or practitioners such as social workers or teachers, depending on what kind of service you’re building. 

How to get started  

You need to: 

• understand the purpose of the different disciplines needed within digital teams and set up teams with this in mind 
• think about the need for other skills, for example, procurement, legal or business experts, and make sure they’re available to the team when needed 
• make sure these experts and the development team work together daily to understand and remove constraints

If there are no people with these skills within your organisation, you need to buy specialist digital support, best accessed through the Digital Marketplace or Sell2Wales. 

This helps build internal capability and skills through working with experts. 

Use an incremental, fast-paced development approach to get working software into users’ hands as early as possible, as often as possible. 

This will help teams rapidly iterate, based on user feedback.   

Why this is important  

Services need to evolve as user needs become better understood. 

Getting a service in front of users as early as possible gives the team feedback on the things that work and the things that need to change. Being able to continuously improve the service means you can respond to changes among users or in technology or government policy. 

How to get started  

You should: 

• use Agile ways of working to support incremental delivery 
• use prototypes to test new ideas with users, to find out cheaply and easily what helps to solve the problem 
• release a functioning product that meets a user need as soon as possible – start with the smallest version of value (a minimum viable product) to get it in front of users and test it, then iterate and iterate again 
• do regular usability testing with users to see what’s working and what improvements need to be made 
• think about how the service will continue to respond to changing user needs

Make the services you build, and the techniques used to build them, as open as possible.  
As you develop a service, your team should communicate the decisions they’re making and share what they’re learning. 

You should also share code and design patterns as freely as possible to help others building public services.  

Why this is important  

An open and collaborative culture within and between public sector organisations helps to share knowledge and deliver consistent services. 

How to get started   

You should: 

• be visible within and outside your organisation – hold regular ‘show and tells’ and blog about the journey, not just the end result 
• celebrate successes and be open about learning from things that haven’t worked so well 
  publish source code, data and other artefacts where it is safe to do so