Video: Doing it properly, at scale
Tom Loosemore, Deputy Director at the UK's Government Digital Service, spoke at ProductTank recently about how to do product development properly, at scale, in government. It's an eye-opening case study of how even the most entrenched and sluggish organisations can revitalise their digital presence with the thoughtful application of simple principles of user-centered design and iterative, agile development.
He and the team at GDS have developed these guiding principles for what they do:
- Start with needs (of the user)
- Do less
- Design with data
- Do the hard work to make it simple
- Iterate. Then iterate again.
- Build for inclusion
- Understand context
- Build digital services, not websites
- Be consistent, not uniform
- Make things open: it makes things better
Given the recent debacle around the launch of healthcare.gov in the US, American government services could definitely take note, but this is a great lesson in how to scale agile and iterative processes that's valid for any big organisation.
About the author
Martin Eriksson
Martin Eriksson has 25+ years experience building world-class online products in both corporate and start-up environments for global brands such as Monster, Financial Times, Huddle, and Covestor. He is the Founder of ProductTank, the Co-Founder and Curator of Mind the Product, and a Product Partner at leading venture capital fund EQT Ventures. He is also the author of the best-seller Product Leadership, How Top Product Leaders Launch Great Products and Build Successful Teams (O'Reilly, 2017).
