What Service Design and Agile Delivery mean for Answer Digital

Before we begin to delve deeper, it's important to clarify the definitions of these terms. As stated by the Service Design Network, “Service Design is the practice of designing services. It uses a holistic and highly collaborative approach to generate value for both the service user and the service provider throughout the service’s lifecycle.” Agile Delivery, according to GitLab, is an iterative software development technique in which teams build software incrementally at the start of a project rather than shipping it all at once. The employment of iterative, incremental, and lean methodologies to streamline and expedite project delivery is referred to as agile development. But, when referring to Answer Digital, what do the two mean?

For Answer, Agile delivery is about incremental value delivery. Service Design allows Answer to see what is of value to the user and allows them to balance this against business value. Having a great value proposition means little unless users can find and use the service, Service Design allows the delivery teams to deliver great solutions that meet user needs from the start.

Answer is looking to understand the user value that needs to be delivered with the intention to unlock long term business value. Ed Brumhead, Head of Consulting at Answer believes that by clearly identifying and understanding what the user values most, Answer can then feed this into delivery and prioritise what’s important, and remove what isn't necessary, ensuring spend and effort effectively delivers value to the user and the business. Combining the two would be a way of “Giving customers what they need before they know they need it.” Says Ed, “We are already incorporating  Service Design ways of working with our customers, actively recruiting for service designers as well as introducing this at our academy level, making this a core part of our thinking when approaching problems.”

Being one of the UK’s best performing IT consultancies recognised by Megabuyte100 in 2022, Answer continues to progress and thrive! Currently with the company combining  the two; Service Design and Agile Delivery, it seeks to open yet more doors for its success.