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Put in place a sustainable multi-disciplinary team that can design, build and operate the service. This team will be led by a suitably skilled senior manager with decision-making responsibility.

How point 7 improves the service

A multidisciplinary team helps them to:

  • analyse user needs, including accessibility and assisted digital needs, and turn these into prioritised user stories
  • manage and report to stakeholders and manage dependencies on other teams
  • design, build, test and iterate software with real users, and deploy and host the software, procuring services from third parties, if needed
  • support the live running of the service (accrediting and handling data, monitoring, fixing things when they break)

How they’ll be assessed

Their assessment and the questions the assessors ask them will vary depending on their service and what it does.

In the discovery assessment

To pass, the service team usually need to:

  • that a well-resourced team with the needed skill set is in place for alpha
  • they can describe and show the resource mix is appropriate and if there are plans to bring in any skills that are missing
  • that they are considering appointment of key roles for example; a service manager, product manager, delivery manager and user researcher working a sufficient number of days a week on the project on a permanent basis
  • a plan for ensuring appropriate knowledge transfer to permanent staff

In the alpha and beta assessments

To pass, the service team usually need to:

  • describe their delivery team - the team should consist of roles like: service manager, product manager, delivery manager, technical architect, assisted digital lead, designer, user researcher, developer, content designer, web operations engineer, performance analyst, front-end developer
  • show they have a service manager with the knowledge and power to make day-to-day decisions to improve the service
  • show they have at least one user researcher working an appropriate number of days each week
  • explain how the separation of key roles in the team means that nobody is performing multiple roles

They also need to:

  • show they understand where gaps may emerge in the team and how to fill them
  • explain their plan to transfer knowledge and skills from contractors to permanent staff
  • show that there’s a person on their team who’s responsible for user research and usability tests
  • show they’ll have a team that can keep improving the service after it goes live
  • show the team fully understands the service after it’s gone live
  • Identify how their team and their way of working will continuously improve the service once it is live