8. Iterate and improve frequently

This guidance will help you apply standard point 8.

Everyone is responsible for meeting the Service Standard. This standard point is most relevant to:

Product managersDelivery managersUser researchersService designersContent designersInteraction designers

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.

All phases

Things to consider:

  • continue to research, test and iterate based on feedback, data, and metrics. The Becoming a teacher design history documents how they have done this
  • put a clear process in place to review content and check that it's up-to-date, reflects current policy, or is retired
  • regulary review where team priorities lie and which improvements will deliver the most value
  • adjust methods to iterate and improve design when there are time constraints
  • enable the team to work together to prioritise a backlog
  • plan how the team will deploy software regularly
  • have the right people in the team to keep improving your service

Things to avoid in all phases

  • not regularly reviewing or iterating the service

  • allowing content or features to become outdated without review