Excellence in public sector agile: our kick-off methodology (Scrum & Kanban)
- Dan Smith
- 11 hours ago
- 4 min read
Our success is rooted in five core principles that guide every interaction and delivery phase:
1. Listen to the users
We engage users at all stages of the development lifecycle. This ensures we understand their needs and motivations so we can develop services they want to use.
2. Design a coherent and holistic solution
We focus on understanding strategic objectives. We then use design thinking to iterate towards a complete solution that solves a whole problem.
3. Build balanced, cohesive and empowered teams
We deploy high-calibre teams who share our clients' goals. Our teams are collaborative, communicative and iterative.
4. Deploy the right technology
We advocate reusability by using standard government components and patterns when possible. We publish to open repositories when it is safe to do so.
5. Build, measure, learn!
We learn with each iteration. We use evidence-led, hypothesis-driven development to make product decisions. We leverage prototyping, continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) and data analytics to move quickly.
Kick-off of a Scrum project
Scrum is a framework for delivering complex digital services where requirements are subject to change. The focus is on achieving a high-quality, shippable increment of work within a fixed timebox. We often apply this methodology to the Discovery and Alpha phases of the Government Digital Service (GDS) service standard.
Objectives, goals, and outcomes
Category | Description of kick-off focus | Core principles applied |
|---|---|---|
Objective | Establish a rhythmic, transparent, and outcome-focused delivery cadence, ensuring alignment with the GDS Service Standard from day one. | #3 (Build balanced, cohesive and empowered teams) |
Goal | Create a prioritised, estimated Product Backlog and establish a shared Definition of Done (DoD) and Definition of Ready (DoR) that meets the client’s quality and security criteria. | |
Outcome | Successful completion of the first Sprint with a potentially shippable increment, leading to the necessary evidence and research artifacts required to pass a formal Alpha or Beta GDS assessment. |
How we collaborate with our client
Our kick-off is a high-tempo, collaborative process designed to embed you into the heart of the delivery team:
Product Owner (PO): The PO is empowered to drive the service vision, goals, and backlog prioritisation. By holding this decision-making power, the PO ensures we meet Service Standard #2: designing a coherent, holistic solution that works for users across all touchpoints. We can either work with the client appointing a dedicated Product Owner to join our team - or we can provide one to act on behalf of our client and service users.
Co-creation of the backlog: We conduct an intensive kick-off workshop over 2 to 3 days. This session defines the initial Minimum Viable Product (MVP), breaks it down into user stories, and groups them into Epics. This ensures that the focus is on #1: Listen to the users by turning user needs into actionable development items.
Establishing ceremonies: We agree on the frequency and focus of all Scrum events (Sprint Planning, Daily Stand-up/Scrum, Sprint Review/Show & Tell, Retrospective). The Sprint Review is explicitly positioned as a client-facing event, ensuring transparency and providing the empirical data required for #5: Build, measure, learn!
Benefits to the client in our approach
Client Benefit | Description |
|---|---|
Faster time-to-value | By focusing on limiting WIP and optimising the flow, we drastically reduce the amount of time it takes for a user need (such as a small feature or bug fix) to get into the hands of the end-user. |
Improved operational stability | The visual nature of Kanban and the focus on cycle time allows the client to predict delivery with greater accuracy and immediately spot and resolve recurring bottlenecks. |
User-driven optimisation | We establish a clear process for incorporating findings from continuous user research (which aligns with #1: Listen to the users) directly into the Kanban Ready queue, ensuring that all work flowing through the system is high-value and user-centric. |
Kick-off of a Kanban project
Kanban is a flow-based system ideal for continuous delivery or managing fluctuating demand. This is suited for clients managing services in Beta or Live phases that require continual improvement.
Kanban project focus
Category | Description of kick-off focus | Core principles applied |
|---|---|---|
Objective | Establish a smooth, efficient workflow and optimise lead time from idea to delivery. | #5 (Build, measure, learn!) |
Goal | Map, visualise and limit work in progress (WIP) across the service pipeline. | #2 (Design a coherent and holistic solution) |
Outcome | A visible Kanban board that provides transparency on service flow and cycle time metrics. | #5 (Build, measure, learn!) |
How we collaborate with clients
Our collaboration model focuses on process mapping and operational excellence:
value stream mapping (VSM): the kick-off starts with a collaborative VSM session with your operational and business leads to map the current process for a work item, such as a bug fix or a feature request. This supports our second principle: design a coherent and holistic solution
visualising the flow: we design the digital Kanban board with columns derived from the VSM, such as 'ready', 'analysis' and 'live'. We jointly agree on the WIP Limits for each column, empowering the team (#3) to prioritise and focus.
continuous feedback loops: we establish service delivery and operations reviews to focus on flow metrics, such as cycle time and throughput. This evidence-led focus is the foundation of #5: Build, measure, learn!
Benefits of the Kanban approach
faster time-to-value: limiting WIP and optimising flow reduces the time it takes for a user need to reach the end-user
improved operational stability: visual boards and cycle time data allow you to predict delivery and resolve bottlenecks
user-driven optimisation: findings from continuous user research go directly into the 'ready' queue to ensure work is high-value
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