What Type of Service Development Approach Are You Using—And Is It the Right One?
There are thousands of ideas, methods and approaches to do 'service design and service change’. The choice of frameworks, tools and techniques is bewildering.
We are often asked: “Which approaches are most effective? When are they helpful?”
These are important questions because, in certain contexts, some frameworks, practices, and methods, make things worse.
We believe the answer lies in understanding which kind of service development challenge you are facing. This needs some unpacking.
In a previous article, we described how transactional and relational services require fundamentally different development approaches. The complexity of the project AND the complexity of the citizens' needs give us clues as to which specific set of approaches will be helpful.
These two dimensions, the project and the citizen, reveal that Transactional Services and Relational Services can be developed using four different approaches.
Before we explain these, it's worth making clear that when we talk about citizen complexity, we’re not referring to a professional evaluation of a citizen's circumstances. Instead, we’re focusing on the citizen's personal experience of the challenges they face.
This experience is influenced by a wide range of factors, including individual perceptions, abilities, the support systems available, and unique personal circumstances. These factors, along with the nature of the problem itself, are not fixed. It’s a dynamic and ever-changing reality, where what one person perceives as complex might not be experienced the same way by another.
The service development matrix
The Service Development Matrix © Basis Ltd
This Service Development Matrix knits together two emerging strands of thinking:
The project management community has long drawn on models from complexity science to help leaders determine whether an agile or waterfall approach is most helpful in different circumstances.
Several thinkers, ourselves included, have argued that the design of services and how citizens are helped should recognise the complexity of their needs.
These are different conversations, but we think they are intrinsically linked. Both recognise that when faced with complexity, we must move away from linear solutions to more adaptive approaches.
Below, we’ll summarise the four service development approaches using the matrix. It’s a simplification of reality, but one we’ve found useful in helping leaders and teams begin a conversation about the kind of project they are dealing with and which approach is likely to be most effective.
In our next article, we’ll explain the steps you can take to determine which of the four approaches could best fit your service development challenge.
The four service development approaches
Transactional Service Design
Mantra:
“Trust the process”
Characteristics:
Neither the change problem nor how to solve it is fully understood
The citizens' needs are understood and relatively stable
Example challenge:
A service that handles planning applications for extensions to residential properties is overwhelmed with requests. Response times to applications are slipping beyond the statutory deadlines. The cause of delays is unclear, but multiple hypotheses exist.
Relational Service Design
Mantra:
“Trust the people”
Characteristics:
Neither the change problem nor how to solve it is understood.
The needs of citizens are complex and unstable.
Example Challenge:
A homelessness service is unable to deal with the increase in demand from citizens who are either at risk of becoming or who are already homeless. The needs of residents are far broader than only needing a roof over their heads. The council doesn't have sufficient local properties to house them and their temporary accommodation budget is overspent and under scrutiny.
Transactional Service Implementation
Mantra:
“Trust the experts”
Characteristics:
The change problem is understood, and a solution is known
Citizens' needs are understood and relatively stable
Example Challenge:
Implementing a digital service to pay council tax online. The team delivering the project has done this many times, and the service requires little to no customisation.
Relational Service Implementation
Mantra:
“Trust the model”
Characteristics:
The change problem is relatively well understood, and a solution is known
Citizens' needs are complex and unstable
Example Challenge:
An Early Help service has designed, tested, and iterated a family hub in three neighbourhoods. They’ve established a relational model where staff have autonomy to act within agreed-upon boundaries, and the model is working well. The council wants to establish another family hub using the same model in a new neighbourhood.
What next?
Understanding which type of service development challenge you are facing has implications for the methods and approaches used to design and deliver the service in question. In the next article, we’ll explain how to map your service change to the Service Development Matrix.
Written by Dennis Vergne and Joseph Badman
© Basis Ltd. 2024