4 - Live
This phase describes the key activities that happen to support the continuous improvement of the service. It should end only when the service is decommissioned, although practically resource constraints may mean that it is shorter. The importance of this phase is that the service won’t yet have delivered every user need identified in the earlier phases, and the user stories delivered in the build phase may not be having the maximum impact. User needs may also change over time, and technology may offer different ways of meeting the needs. The improve phase enables the team to continue investing in the iteration and enhancement of the service, whilst ensuring the current version is well-supported.
The live phase is the time to keep improving your service based on:
- user feedback
- analytics
- your ongoing user research
What to do in live
- Promote the Service
User Feedback
- You should continue to use the mechanism identified in the Beta phase to gather ongoing user feedback
- This can also be bolstered by feedback from the service, customer services and feedback from the website where appropriate
- Issues and improvements identified during live should be added to a new backlog so that they can be prioritised
After you move to the live phase you should keep improving your service based on user feedback, analytics and further user research.
Keep finding things that need improvement, do research to get the best solutions, iterate, then release.
Measure success
- A schedule for gathering data for ESB and performance indicator (PI)measurement should be established with the service area
- The responsibility for the delivery of the ESB’s and PI’s sits with the service area
- The Transformation Team can help analyse and compile the information
Retrospective
Mini retrospectives will have been done at the end of each sprint but this retrospective will consider the project as a whole
It should:
- Help identify lessons learned
- Generate suggestions for improvement going forward
- Give everyone the chance to share their experience of the project good or bad
There are many techniques for doing this and loads can be found here
In some ways this is the most important project meeting as it should mean we continually improve
Tools
- User stories
- A prioritised ‘backlog’
- A product roadmap
Moving to the next Phase
The Improve phase does not end, but if you are regularly delivering user stories you should ensure that at least quarterly you are reviewing the service performance metrics
Promote the Service
To ensure as wide a take up of possible of the new service a communication and promotion plan will be needed.
Some key components will be:
- The service area and customer services should actively promote the new service both internally and externally
- Signposting to the service from the council’s website should be clear and content pages created to inform customers of the new service
- Social media should be used to promote the service
- Councillors should be briefed on the new service and the benefits to the council and customers
