6. Have a multidisciplinary team
Put in place a multidisciplinary team that can create and operate the service in a sustainable way.
Why it’s important
You’ll need a team made up of people with a diverse mix of skills and expertise.
It’s important that people who are involved in decision making are part of the team, so they’re accountable to the team - and the team as a whole can respond quickly to what they learn about users and their needs.
What it means
Services should:
- be built by a multidisciplinary team that’s appropriate to what they need to achieve during the relevant phase of the service’s development, and co-located as much as possible
- include people on the team with expertise in how services are delivered across all the relevant offline channels, and the back end systems the service will need to integrate with
- provide the team with access to the specialist expertise it needs (for example legal, policy or industry-specific analysis - from inside or outside the organisation)
- if the team is working with contractors and outside suppliers, make sure it’s on a sustainable basis
To some extent, the team will be shaped by what they’re doing at that point. For example, a team that’s working on an alpha - and its riskiest assumptions are to do with interaction design rather than technology - might need less involvement from a technical architect at this stage.
Start with the assumption that you’ll need a broad range of roles. A team with diversity of perspectives is more likely to come up with the best solution.
Related guidance
Working with contractors or third parties
What each role does in a service team
Service standard points
1. Understand users and their needs
2. Solve a whole problem for users
3. Provide a joined up experience across all channels
4. Make the service simple to use
5. Make sure everyone can use the service
6. Have a multidisciplinary team
8. Iterate and improve frequently
9. Create a secure service which protects users’ privacy
10. Define what success looks like and publish performance data
11. Choose the right tools and technology
13. Use and contribute to open standards, common components and patterns
- Last update:
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Added links to related guidance and other standard points. There is no change to the content of the standard point itself.
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Guidance first published