Being agile and lean in UK government

Now that we have learned about agile, let’s explore a variation of the method – lean.

As we learned in step 2.4, government projects historically followed a ‘waterfall’ approach, in which phases of work proceeded in sequence towards project completion. This often led to delays and wasted efforts.

In order to get things done quickly and efficiently, we now use agile methods. During agile sprints – short, rapid periods or cycles of work – teams often take what is known as a ‘lean’ approach to tasks.

Lean is a variation of agile methodology that emphasises reducing waste of time, effort and resources through systematic analysis of processes and value streams.

Agile can be thought of as an umbrella term that incorporates different methodologies and frameworks – lean is a specific approach within agile that focuses on efficiency.

In terms of user research, a lean approach is about getting the most insight for the time invested.

It is important to note that user research in the UK Government can differ from how agile and lean approaches may be conducted in the private sector. This is because government is a very specific context – we often have legacy processes and systems, as well as policy, ministerial and public commitments, that can constrain our work and deadlines.

In general, to be both agile and lean, service teams must be able to quickly:

• update their understanding of users and their needs
• test new design ideas, content and features to see if they work well for all users
• understand problems users are having and how they might be resolved
• calculate the risks of moving ahead with assumptions (based on what they have learned so far) and have the confidence to build and then iterate further based on future evidence

Service teams therefore need to continually research the needs and experiences of their users.

The challenge for user researchers is keeping pace with the needs of the team and balancing these with the practical logistics of research, designing research, recruiting participants for research, and analysing results. It’s also important to know that the product or service owner on your team will be considering user evidence alongside other evidence and business goals to make their decisions.

To support this learning, user researchers in government (unlike those working in academic or social research, for example) are usually embedded within service teams. This enables teams to be leaner in their research approach and allows user researchers to be more agile and regularly deliver insights.

By doing batches of user research in every iteration of each development, teams can quickly understand users, test ideas, and identify problems to be fixed. The service can be improved incrementally by implementing this feedback.

This is so important in government because we need our services to work for our users. We closely follow the standards and principles we learned about in the previous steps to ensure that our users are central to everything we do.

Task

Agile and lean are just two of many different project management frameworks and techniques.

Think about your current or previous roles. Have you used agile, lean or any other management framework? Can you think of advantages or disadvantages?

Share your thoughts and experience in the comments below.