The structure of a digital project
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At NEC Digital Studio, we deliver tailored projects in line with the Government Service Manual. Our projects typically move through 4 key stages: discovery, alpha, beta and live.
Our services offer clients the opportunity to use the full range of our capabilities to create something bespoke. We’re experts in researching user needs, designing a solution, building a product or service and running it in live.
We can deliver complete end-to-end projects, or we can pick up specific stages across our range of disciplines to adapt to our clients’ needs.
Because every client is different, so is every project. We’ll walk through a typical agile project delivered in line with the Government Service Manual. But in reality, we need to be flexible to meet our client’s needs. The playbook is here to offer guidance, but project delivery is not a prescriptive process.
Before we can build a new product or service, we need to understand the problem we’re trying to solve. A discovery focuses on just that; what is the problem, and what are the opportunities to solve it? The priority during discovery is to understand the users and their requirements, the constraints upon people and technology and the opportunities for solutions. It helps clients decided what to do, as well as what not to do. Whatever we learn in the discovery should inform the alpha, if findings recommend the development of a product or service.
DiscoveryThe alpha is experimentation. The team creates and tests different solutions to the problem they identified in the discovery. Our time is spent building prototypes and testing them on different users. It should also be expansive, a time for trying new and potentially unconventional ideas in case they might be the solution.
AlphaOnce we’ve identified the best idea, we start building it for real. We constantly test with small groups of users to get feedback on design and development and make changes. We think about how the solution could be scaled up and start running in the real world. An optional private beta (a small-scale test of the live service) may be run before the solution is ready for a public beta where it’s launched to all relevant users of the service.
BetaAfter the service is launched, the job is not done. We focus on iterating, continuing to drive improvements to functionality, accessibility and sustainability. When new or unmet needs come to light, they trigger further discoveries and development as we explore how to make the service better.
Live is not just about iterating the product, it’s also about the support we provide to its users. Our dedicated support teams handle enquiries, system maintenance and incident management. They monitor the products and services we are responsible for 24 hours a day, aiming to resolve issues before they affect users.
LiveTraditional project management uses a waterfall method, where research is conducted to gather requirements, then a product is designed and built before being tested and released. It follows a sequential journey.
Agile is overlapping activity. There’s still a sequential journey, but there’s a strong focus on continually adapting our approach as our client’s needs evolve. We often rely on the scrum framework to deliver our projects in an agile way.
We start small in the discovery and alpha phases, expanding the prototypes as we learn more about the users’ needs. Usually in the beta phase, an idea becomes an MVP (minimum viable product) before growing into a more sizeable service with further features. It’s only once the data and feedback show the service is successful that it can go live.
“Agile methods encourage teams to build quickly, test what they’ve built and iterate their work based on regular feedback and other useful data.” ~ Government Service Manual
It’s a less linear process than waterfall. Many steps are repeated time and time again as we adapt to feedback and align our priorities. But it makes sure we're delivering something that works, and is exactly what the users need.
At the heart of our processes is flexibility and iteration. There’s no one-size-fits-all approach.
We adapt how we deliver to whatever our clients need, to best align with their programmes and ways of working. Whether we’re working with government, private sector or third-sector clients, we design the delivery, the tools and the methodologies around their needs.
