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When we say we support products and services in ‘live’, we mean that we are supporting the running and improvement of a service for our clients and their users. It is the constant evolution of a living, breathing service that is live in the real world.
It’s the final step in the Government Service Manual, following a discovery, alpha and beta. We support the platforms and infrastructure that enable our clients to run services in a business-as-usual capacity.
Our work revolves around the delivery of a roadmap, a reflection of user requirements, technology advancements and political or societal change. Working with the client, we prioritise the roadmap and schedule work in line with the budget. Each new feature will be researched, designed, developed and tested before being launched in the live service.
Clients rely on companies like us to support their live products and services because it makes their lives easier. We take on the responsibility of keeping the system running smoothly, providing user support and future-proofing the roadmap.
We fix problems and proactively make the product better. Our clients value having a hands-off approach, knowing they have no day-to-day responsibilities and can trust the delivery of the service.
And we offer more than the product itself. It’s not just bug fixes and product enhancement. It’s about integrating ourselves into our client’s work to understand their wider organisation and impact of our products. In doing so, we fuel innovation and provide better support.
Whether we’re supporting a client’s live service or delivering our own Software as a Service (SaaS) solutions, the team is very similar to the earlier phases of project delivery. Our research and design teams inform and shape the designs that our development teams bring to life. Every new piece of functionality is like a self-contained discovery, alpha and beta where ideas are researched, tested and built in an iterative and agile manner.
For our SaaS solutions, the product manager works with the clients to understand what they need and get feedback on the product. They decide the strategic direction of the product based on customer feedback, sector insights and improvement through innovation. The product owner is the gatekeeper of development, translating the needs of the roadmap into requirements for the development team to build. They work with the product manager to agree what should be included in the roadmap and prioritise the work that needs to be done first. They weigh up profitability and business impact to decide on the best solution.
Each live product and service has a roadmap. It sets out the intention for that product and the timescales for getting there. It’s based on a pipeline of work that needs to be done. All future development will be planned and prioritised based on the existing pipeline. Development work may include:
Bug fixes. As with all technology, there will always be bugs. Sometimes the client spots something that doesn’t work quite as intended, and other times we spot it. The code then needs to be updated, which has to be planned and accounted for.
Technical debt. As soon as code is committed, it starts to age. This process is a fundamental part of the software development lifecycle. Over time, this legacy can start to become burdensome and affect application performance and the overhead of support. It’s important to keep on top of the technical debt, re-factoring and refining code to ensure optimal performance and sustainability.
Enhancements. This focuses on the functionality we can add to make the product better. We might have identified an opportunity to automate a process, or a customer may have suggested a tool to help them do things more efficiently. We build changes into the core product to meet that need.
Innovation. Making a product better isn’t only about small incremental improvement. We take advantage of our innovation laboratories around the world to identify technologies to solve problems we couldn’t previously solve and offer our clients a new and better way of doing things. Examples of this would be the significant advances in generative artificial intelligence and biometrics, fields in which NEC is a global leader. These have allowed us to change some of the fundamentals of our products in ways that radically improve their value to our clients.
Our development teams deliver all of the above, with solution architects, data scientists and designers feeding into enhancements and innovation. The development teams rely on the product owner and product manager to prioritise the work and put it in a logical order. It’s the scrum master’s job to make sure the team knows exactly what to deliver and by when. We use Jira, an agile work management tool, to track the changes, status and owner of all development.
We adapt our ways of working to fit how the work was commissioned. Clients may ask us to work within the scrum framework. Scrum is time bound, set in sprints with specific ceremonies that are typically repeated in 2-week cycles. The development that happens in that time is also time-bound and focuses on iterating with every cycle to learn from the last.
Sprints are planned, with care being taken to add the right amount of work into the sprint, taking into consideration the estimated effort for each item and the resources available within the sprint team,
We employ standard agile ceremonies to keep stakeholders informed and receive feedback, including:
Daily standups with the team, and often the client too, to review the previous day and ensure each team member knows what they need to do and that they have the resources and support required to achieve it
Show and tells at the end of a sprint to present what has been achieved and listen to client and colleague feedback
Sprint retrospectives for the internal team to review what went well, what didn't go so well and what to do differently in the next sprint
Some of our clients prefer us to work in kanban rather than scrum. Kanban is not timebound in the same way as scrum, it is simply a list of things to do that are picked off one-by-one by the development team. Kanban translates from Japanese to mean “signboard” and can be pictured as such, with cards for each element needing to be developed.
For our own SaaS solutions, our teams follow the scrum framework, working in specific sprints and following standard agile ceremonies. The scrum master, product manager and product owner work together to prioritise the roadmap and support the development team to bring our roadmap to life and make sure we meet our service level agreements.
Regardless of how we implement the work, what we deliver is constant improvements. Our ambition is to deliver systems that are smarter, safer, seamless and more sustainable.
We have service-level agreements (SLAs) with our clients. These are typically contractual agreements regarding the quality and availability of a service. We have dedicated support teams monitoring performance, and intervening if they need to.
Our front-line support, where we receive and log calls, goes through the NEC SWS helpdesk into our service management system. It’s then categorised and handed over to the NEC Digital Studio teams for second-line support for detailed triage, technical assistance and advice and guidance. In some instances, it will then be referred to third-line support for the development and infrastructure team to review.
Some clients prefer to run their own front-line support to triage calls before they are assigned to us. In those cases, we integrate with their systems and processes to ensure we offer seamless support for end users.
To help clients get the most from our products, we offer ongoing training as part of the live phase. Fully trained staff use the services better and more efficiently. They also tend to be more invested in its usage and better able to contribute to its improvement.
We can provide train-the-trainer training (where we upskill someone to pass that knowledge on within an organisation) as well as end-user training to larger groups. Our training can be run face-to-face or virtually, depending on the client’s need. The training also includes supporting documentation, like training guides, how to guides or videos. And it’s always run by professional dedicated trainers who are experts in delivering these sessions, so our clients receive the professional support they need, in the way they need it.
And if clients aren’t sure what support they need? We run training needs analysis with them to explore what they want to achieve and how best to get there. We’ll talk to stakeholders, run surveys and pull together a proposed training plan so our clients have confidence in what they’re buying.
All things end, eventually. Contracts are not renewed and products are retired to make way for something better, or because the need for them has diminished.
Where we support a service on behalf of a client, and they own the intellectual property, they may choose to use a different supplier. Where this is the case, we follow the agreed off-boarding process to handover to the new supplier, upskilling their team as required.
When closing down a service, we work with clients to:
consider user needs – how will their needs be met after the service is retired?
tell users – how to communicate the change and help people through the journey?
make a plan to redirect traffic – when the service is retired, are users being redirected to a replacement service? And if not, what support can we provide?
protect information – what is the plan to secure the information that has been stored and processed during the running of the service?
