When considering the benefits of accelerating discovery in digital service delivery, we need look no further than Formula One for a powerful analogy.
On the track, the drivers may rule supreme, but the car they speed to victory in comes a close second. From its lightweight frame to its stripped-back controls and aerodynamic design, it’s nothing like the vehicles most of us own and drive every day. But every single feature on it exists with one sole purpose: to speed over the finish line and take the title.
It’s the same principle in the discovery phase. When we accelerate discovery, it forces us to focus on the outcomes that matter the most and deprioritise those that don’t — and this can lead to a whole host of additional advantages.
In my previous post in this series, I explained what it means to accelerate discovery. In this post, I’m going to outline the four key advantages to accelerating discovery.
Accelerating discovery can be useful to help you:
- Narrow focus on the most important problem
- See results sooner
- Accelerate team and individual learning
- Reduce rework and waste
Let’s dive in and take a deeper look at these tangible and intangible benefits of accelerating discovery.
Narrow focus on the most important problem
When you run an effective discovery, you’re likely to find several problems that need solutions at once. But it’s impossible to deliver at pace if you focus on all of them at once.
Accelerating discovery enables teams to focus on outcomes, not output. This means they are more quickly able to identify and deliver the highest value outcome first and avoid analysis paralysis.
See results sooner
When delivery teams spend less time in the discovery phase, they can test their hypothesis with real users sooner. This means they can see the results of their solution, and collect valuable feedback on what works, and what doesn’t.
Seeing the fruits of your labour on an incremental basis helps you know if you’re solving the problem in the right way, giving you a direction of travel. This saves time, money, and crucially, allows you to pivot more quickly when your solution isn’t working.
Accelerate team and individual learning
Failing fast and learning quickly is a key part of the GDS agile principles — so it comes as no surprise that when you accelerate discovery, it paves the way for quicker learning, too. And we know that the faster our teams learn, the more confident and high-performing they are likely to become.
Accelerating discovery has a direct advantage for team and individual learning because it enables teams to test their solutions and learn what works — or doesn’t work — more quickly. But this learning process also applies to non-technical skills too; it enables your team to be more innovative and find new ways of speeding things up.
Reduce rework and waste
The process of accelerating discovery is guided by lean principles. These are focused on reducing waste and rework, as well as delivering at pace and using evidence and data to make decisions.
By accelerating discovery and getting your solution in the hands of real users, you are able to avoid significant waste and rework down the line, and focus on delivering a solution that truly meets the needs of your users.
Want to know more about accelerating your digital service discovery?
This blog post shares just a small snapshot of our recently published whitepaper: Accelerating discovery in public sector digital service delivery. To find out more about how you can accelerate discovery in your organisation, click here to download our latest whitepaper for free.
About the Author
Luke Morton
Chief Technology Officer at Made Tech
