Starting point

Before you start, please bear in mind your organisation's governance structures and rules around procurement.  If you have procurement staff, speak to them before you begin to ensure you follow the right process for your organisation.   

Whatever procurement route you take you’ll need requirements for your project and budget holder sign off.

Defining Digital Requirements

See Defining Digital Requirements for help with gathering your requirements.

Most of your requirements will focus on your users’ initial needs, but don’t forget to consider your ongoing support and maintenance requirements, as well as any planned/unplanned updates or changes you might need to the software (which is sometimes called continuous improvement). 

You may also have overarching requirements, such as delivering the digital service in Welsh and being accessible.  More information is available in the Welsh Language and Accessibility sections of the toolkit.

Your requirements should focus on the problem you are trying to solve – it is the responsibility of the potential supplier to suggest the technical approach.  

Ongoing Maintenance and Support 

Hardware, software and digital tools often require ongoing maintenance and support to keep them working correctly, secure and current.  Your digital partner should be able to suggest a suitable level of maintenance and support once your digital product is live.

You should ensure that there are review points in any maintenance contract to ensure that you have an option to evaluate and rescale the maintenance service, if needed.

Continuous Improvement

As your understanding of user needs and use of your digital product develops, you might want to add a new feature, or refine one.  This is sometimes referred to as continuous improvement, and just like when you scope a new piece of work, should be based on user needs.

An output of discovery is a list of user needs/requirements.  It is often not possible to meet all of those needs during the first development of a digital tool; this is why the needs are prioritised, so that the most important are met.  Any unmet user needs should be captured in a backlog, which could be tackled through continuous improvement activity. 

Where you agree that continuous improvement is to take place, ensure you have requirements, timescales and a price agreed and confirmed in a contract or contract variation. This will help to make sure that expectations are agreed by you and the supplier.

As well as keeping your digital product current, continuous improvement can be a really good way to engage your users and show that you are evolving to meet their needs so you may want to factor this in as a requirement for consideration.