Iterate and improve frequently
This guidance will help you apply standard point 8 (opens in a new tab).
Everyone is responsible for meeting the Service Standard. This standard point is most relevant to:
Delivery managers Product managers Designers User researchersSummary
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 throughout 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're working on is not being assessed, it's good practice to consider how you'll meet this standard point.
All phases
Things to consider:
continued research and iteration based on feedback, data, and metrics. The Becoming a teacher design history documents how they've done this
a process to review content and check that it's up-to-date, 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
having the right people in the team to keep improving the service
Things to avoid in all phases
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not regularly reviewing or iterating the service
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allowing content or features to become outdated without review
Profession specific guidance
Each DDaT profession in DfE has their own community and guidance.