8. Iterate and improve frequently
This guidance will help you apply standard point 8 (opens in new tab).
Everyone is responsible for meeting the Service Standard. This standard point is most relevant to:
Delivery Managers Product Managers Service DesignersSummary
Make sure you have the capacity, people and technical flexibility to iterate and improve the service frequently, focusing on improvements that deliver the most value.
Why it’s important
Services are never ‘finished’. Once you’ve got real people using your service, you need to iterate and improve it.
This means more than doing basic maintenance, like fixing bugs in code or deploying security patches. It means responding to feedback and changes in user needs and behaviour, technology and DfE policy. It also means being able to make substantial improvements (opens in new tab) through the service’s lifetime.
How to meet this standard in every phase
You’ll be assessed on what you’ve done to meet this standard at service assessments. However, even if the service you are working on is not being assessed, it’s good practice to consider how you’ll meet this standard point.
Things to consider:
- continued research and iteration based on feedback, data and metrics. Becoming a teacher design history (opens in new tab) documents how they’ve done this
- a process to review content and check that it’s up-to-date and reflects current policy, or is retired
- where team priorities lie and which improvements will deliver the most value
- methods to iterate and improve design when there are time constraints
- how the team will work together to prioritise a backlog
- how the team will deploy software regularly (opens in new tab)
- having the right people in the team to keep improving the service
Profession specific guidance
Each DDaT profession in DfE has their own community and guidance.