Introduction
An introduction to the Test, Learn and Grow programme, how it works in practice and who the playbook is for.
The goal of the Test, Learn and Grow programme is to show how this way of working can improve public services, and create the conditions to scale these methods. The playbook shares what we’ve learned, making it easier for you to take a similar approach.
Everything here has been developed through experience in real places, with real teams and real problems. Over the past year, our multidisciplinary teams have collaborated with communities to improve services for people facing complex challenges, whether violence against women and girls or children’s social care.
We’re proud of this work. We’re also aware it has not always been perfect. The playbook includes examples so you can learn from what we’ve done.
Test and learn is a way of working that brings humility to policy making, accepting it’s impossible to know how even a well-conceived idea will work in practice.
This approach to developing public services is not new, revolutionary or unique to the Test, Learn and Grow (TLG) programme. It uses agile tools and techniques central to best-practice digital services such as Universal Credit. Anyone who has ever suggested starting small and seeing what happens will be familiar with it.
Where our approach differs is in combining methods to best meet the needs of our users. For example, we’ve drawn on:
- evaluation practices
- hypothesis-driven design
- user-centred design
- relational working
- participatory practices
Bringing these established methods together has helped us show how to improve services and develop policy, whether digital is involved or not.
Adapting test and learn to your context
Your local context will look different to ours. We’ve tried not to be prescriptive. However, learning and iterating are fundamental to the approach. Success means seeing how ideas work in the real world and using that evidence to test and iterate.
A test and learn approach:
- is evaluative and focused on outcomes – defining how success will be measured before testing starts
- is iterative – enabling teams to adapt when assumptions turn out to be wrong
- is user-centred – ensuring research, design and testing are done with users, staff and communities
- starts small – testing the simplest version of an idea to reduce uncertainty and risk before scaling
- prioritises learning – using evidence to make decisions, documenting and sharing findings across the organisation
Teams need to look closely at the conditions that support continuous learning, whether in a local authority, an NHS trust or a central government department.
Every project should explore the connections between:
- service improvements
- local system conditions
- central constraints
We call this focus ‘grow’ because it’s how we grow the conditions for organisations to solve problems alongside the people they serve.
A team may take a test and learn approach. But an organisation benefits most from adopting Test, Learn and Grow, making learning and iterating central to how it operates.
This playbook is for:
- practitioners who are ambitious for change, and need practical support to achieve it
- leaders who have the power to enable or get in the way of the test and learn approach
Creating the permission and conditions for Test, Learn and Grow requires action at every level. That means drawing on the agility and creativity of those closest to the challenge, backed by leaders who take on the risk and give teams space to act.
We hope the playbook inspires you to share your test and learn stories, so we can develop this practice together. In the spirit of testing and learning, we’re releasing this guidance as we go rather than waiting for the programme to finish.
We’re keen to hear from you about:
- what works well
- what’s missing
We’ll keep improving the playbook alongside the users it’s designed for – those of you working to make public services better across the country.