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How we created the new Digital and Service Design Principles - by Tara Rhoseyn

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Sporting performance is often marked out of 10, so it’s a nice fit that we’ll have 10 principles to judge potential digital projects.

Not that we set out to make it 10…but I think, after lots of tweaks and changes, we’ve got a good mix.

As a new team we wanted to set out how we want to work with each other and the rest of the organisation.

Sport Wales previously created a set of Digital Principles to govern how digital projects work, but they weren’t well communicated and we felt they needed a revamp. We wanted our principles to be clear, understandable, and agile.

We decided to go through an iterative process (creating new versions based on feedback) to create our new principles. We needed our principles to help us achieve these goals:

  • all our software is integrated, sustainable and accessible
  • we work to best practice in the public sector and digital space
  • we have clear ways of working with colleagues and procured partners

And we now have a version of the principles ready for use. We have a long-form version that has an explanation of each principle and a short-form version for easy distribution.

 

Short-form Principles

Sport Wales New Digital Principles

Long-form Principles

You can also view the long-form version of these Principles.

How we decided on them

We began by looking at the original Principles and figuring out what worked well and what didn’t work so well:

Sport Wales Old Digital Principles

 

We liked how much priority was placed on user needs but felt that it could alienate colleagues with its highly technical language. 

We then did research into how other organisations had tackled this problem, including the CDPS (Cente for Digital Public Services) and GDS (Government Digital Service).

Then we dived in and began writing. We recorded each version we made, the feedback gathered on it, then how the next version had been changed based on the feedback (using Principle 9 – Test and Change). We used forms, shared documents and a board showing all the feedback gathered to track changes:

The Digital Principles Process

 

In the image showing some tools we used you’ll see a screenshot of a board with lots of post-it notes. All of the yellow post-it notes are pieces of feedback that were directly implemented in the next version. 

Feedback came from three core groups:

  • Group A: Digitally-based colleagues, including the Digital and Service Design Team, Digital and Communications, and Technology Solutions.
  • Group B: Representatives from across the Sport Wales directorates, particularly focusing on Investment, Insight and Institute.
  • Group C: Experts from industry, including GDS, CDPS, Perago, Empyrean, Method4 and MadeTech.

We want to thank all of those who lent us their time and expertise in helping us craft these principles. 

What we learnt from the process

Developing a project through iteration is becoming more and more common at Sport Wales and the process of creating these Principles was a great lesson in the benefits of ‘sharing work with others’ (Principle 7). Each piece of feedback collected was available via an online link (you can still view this file now) and each colleague and expert could directly see that their feedback had shaped the Principles.

I also learnt just how much excitement and appetite there is across the business for the new team. There’s a real excitement in the air around what can be achieved with this renewed focus on developing our digital capacity. 

What next

You may start to see some visual reminders of the new principles, and they’re also available online. We encourage you to read them and we hope they spark some thinking about what it means to start, commit and deliver projects together.

In the coming months, you’ll hear more from us about how to propose digital and service design projects and what we’re working on. Keep an eye out for news in Huddle, Kit and on our website!

Blog by Tara Rhoseyn, Digital and Service Design Programme Manager