The principles

1. General Principles
   • Services will be designed against an understanding of purpose, demand and the current capability of the organisation to deliver the service
   • Services will be designed ‘outside-in’ (customer focused), ‘not in-side out’ (internally focused)
   • Services will be designed within the context of the system, not in isolation, e.g. by focusing on the optimisation of the system as a whole, rather than on individual components
   • Services will be designed around an understanding of value and efficiency of flow
   • The design will not treat a special cause of variation as if it was a common cause
   • Services will be co-created with their users
   • Service designs will be prototyped
   • Against a clear business model and high level design, services will be designed, built and deployed incrementally and iteratively, to deliver value early and to inform the design
   • Services will be designed and delivered collaboratively, leveraging maximum benefit from the internal and partner network
2. Process Design
   • Activities that do not add value for the customer will be minimised
   • Work will be structured around processes, not functions, products or geography
   • The fragmentation of work will be minimised. Where possible, a single individual will have responsibility for a process from start to finish, to minimise hand-offs, reduce errors, delays, rework and administration overhead; and encourage ownership, innovation, creativity and improve control
   • Process complexity will be minimised, by reducing the number of process steps, hand-offs, rules and controls; and by empowering staff to make decisions
   • Multiple versions of a process (tuned to different customer needs, markets, situations or inputs) will be developed where necessary, to ensure that the design of each process is fully aligned to customer demand
   • For any given customer demand, process variation will be minimised to maximise reliability and predictability
   • Linear processing will be minimised, e.g. by avoiding the artificial linear sequencing of tasks and through the use of parallel processing and variable sequencing
   • Excessive process decomposition will be avoided, e.g. by replacing work instructions and call scripts with appropriate staff training and knowledge development
   • Unnecessary process breaks and delays will be minimised
   • The need for reconciliation will be minimised
   • The need for controls will be minimised
   • The need for inspection will be minimised
   • We will only measure what matters
3. Organisation Design
   • Work groups will be organised by process and competencies
   • Staff will be empowered to make decisions
   • Work will be located where it can be done most efficiently and effectively
4. Data Design
   • Data will be normalised across the organisation and its partner network
   • Data will be transferable and re-usable across the organisation and its partner network
   • Data entry will be avoided, by using data lookup, selection and confirmation approaches
5. Technology Design
   • Technology will act as an enabler, rather than as a driver
   • Technology will be ‘pulled’ into a design, not ‘pushed’
   • The technology design will be flexible and agile, able to be easily modified in response to changing business requirements