Iterate and improve frequently
Iterate and improve frequently
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What does it mean to iterate and improve frequently?
Iterating and improving frequently means running your product as a service so that it evolves based on user feedback and performance data. It means actively monitoring emerging needs and fixing issues promptly to keep your service relevant and reliable.
Why is this important?
Iterating and improving frequently is essential for providing good service. It makes sure you keep up with and respond to changes in user needs, industry standards and technology throughout your product’s lifecycle.
How to do it
Here are some suggestions for iterating and improving frequently. Depending on where you’re at in your process, you might not need to follow every step.
Before you start developing your product, make sure you have:
- a map of your business process
- a service blueprint that shows all user pain points
- clear roles and responsibilities within your team
- a clear understanding of how your team will work (for example, Agile, product management, Lean)
- endorsement from senior leaders
Discover
- Know your workflow. Understand the policies, infrastructure, processes and resources needed for continuous service delivery.
- Analyze your data and feedback. Analyze your performance data and user feedback for strengths and weaknesses. Look for patterns, common issues, suggestions for improvement, and requests for new features. This information will give you valuable insight into user needs, behaviour and preferences and help you make informed decisions. Look for positive feedback as well.
- Identify the problem and set clear objectives. Based on the data and feedback, clearly articulate the problem you need to solve and decide what you want to achieve. Make sure that what you want to achieve aligns with users’ needs.
Build
- Develop and test your ideas with users early on. Before you decide on a solution and invest time and resources in it, test your ideas with a diverse sample of users. Share your brainstorming ideas, design options, simple mock-ups, wireframes (low‑ or high‑fidelity) and prototypes. All this will help your developers validate ideas.
- Establish a minimum viable product. A minimum viable product (MVP) is a version of a product that has just enough features to meet users’ most critical needs. Releasing an MVP lets you test your assumptions with real users, make informed improvements and minimize development costs.
- Adjust your plans. Adjust your plans based on feedback, performance data and what you learn from each iteration. Be flexible and adjust to changing requirements or conditions.
- Prioritize improvements.Prioritize improvements based on how they affect the user experience, on whether they align with business goals, and on how much effort it takes to implement them. To do this, keep a backlog – a wish list of all the desired features – and use it to set priorities. Having a backlog will help ensure steady improvement, urgent changes are addressed first and resources are allocated effectively.
- Make sure users can submit feedback.Make sure users can submit feedback on your product and on the improvements to it. You can do this by including your contact information or a survey on your product.
- Document your changes. Keep a detailed record of all the changes you make, why you made them, and what the outcome was. Having this record will help you track progress and learn from past iterations so that you can improve future ones.
Test
- Test your product with users.Test your product with users on public testing platforms, such as Service Canada Labs, Alpha and Github.
- Set baseline performance measures. Determine the key performance indicators (KPIs) that are relevant to your product’s goals (for example, user engagement rates, load times, or conversion rates). These indicators will give you a reference point for tracking progress and for identifying areas where improvement is needed. They will also provide evidence you can use when you’re making decisions about how to optimize product performance.
- Do automated testing. Build automated testing into your product so that you will have constant feedback and to help make sure future changes don’t introduce new problems.
- Do usability testing. Do usability testing, A/B testing or beta testing with users to get feedback on changes, determine whether they were effective and identify any further refinements.
- Pivot if your solution isn’t effective. If you discover policy, technical or financial limitations, or if you find out users don’t actually need the product, you might have to put development on hold or rethink it. Not every solution will work, so be prepared to pivot if a solution doesn’t meet users’ needs.
Monitor and iterate
- Monitor performance. Monitor product performance continuously. Use your metrics and KPIs to evaluate the performance of your product after launch and after making changes.
- Collect feedback from different sources. Collect feedback from sources such as surveys, customer support interactions, and usability testing sessions.
- Repeat this process.Repeat this process (discover, build, test, monitor) as new information comes in.
Resources
Principles
Considerations
- Evidence-based decision-making
Tools and resources
Case studies
Talent
- UX research
- UX design
- Data/Business analysis
- product management
- Performance measurement
GC policy instruments
GC Communities and Training
Communities of practice
- Agile Centre of Excellence
- GC service community (Available only on the Government of Canada network)
- Digital Analytics Community of Practice(Available only on the Government of Canada network)
- Product Management Community of Practice (Available only on the Government of Canada network)
Training
Help us improve
This work is iterative, and we will continue to improve on it based on your feedback.
Share your thoughts and suggestions by email: servicedigital-servicesnumerique@tbs-sct.gc.ca