Sample game plans
We’ve created some basic game plans for you to use. You can also modify these game plans to suit your project goals.
Definition
In the context of the playbook, a project is a series of tasks that need to be completed to achieve a particular objective or result. A project can be anything – from business-as-usual work your team is doing, up to an officially funded program of work.
Planning game plan
Use this game plan to: start your project and set it up for success.
Run this game plan: at the beginning of a project.
These plays will help you define your goals for the project, take stock of your assets, obstacles, and stakeholders, and set benchmarking metrics to measure success against later.
- Create a multi-disciplinary team
Build a diverse team with members from the right digital disciplines for enhanced problem-solving and creative collaboration. Plan the allocation of team members to the project through different stages of the service design and delivery process. - Team charter
A team charter is a document that outlines your project’s goal, scope, and assets, and defines the roles and responsibilities of everyone in the team. Your charter can also include a project timeline. A good team charter helps define your team’s focus and keep everyone aligned. - Stakeholder mapping Start by creating a stakeholder map to understand the stakeholders and systems which will be impacted by your project. The stakeholder analysis will help you determine who you should invite for collaboration and consultation on the project.
Discovery stage game plan
Use this game plan to: understand and focus on the right problems.
Run this game plan: after a kick-off.
These plays will help you identify the problems you need to solve, understand the systems they exist in, and begin to generate solutions.
- Problem definition
Use this activity to give team members an understanding of the core problem to solve, without being blinded by a shiny end-goal or pre-defined solution.
Creating a problem definition at the beginning of the discovery process is a good way to start off a successful project. - Defining success
Now is a great time to take some benchmark measurements to track your progress against. Use your understanding of the core problem/s to identify metrics you can use to measure the impact of your project and what success will look like. - Desktop research
Before you begin solving the problems you’ve defined, use existing sources of information to gather data and insights on them. Desktop research should be the starting point of any research you do. It helps to ensure that you’re using your time and resources efficiently, and not repeating something that has already been done. - User research planning
User research can inform design decisions and help ensure that the resulting product or service meets the needs and expectations of its intended users. The best time to do user research planning is at the beginning of a project – before you start making design decisions. - Customer journey map (current state)
Create a visual representation of the current customer experience with your product or service. This will help you understand user needs at every stage of the journey, and the factors that directly or indirectly impact their experience.
Note: For this play, you should use customer research to map the customer journey. Desktop research and user research planning are useful for getting started with user research. - Service Blueprint (current state) A current-state service blueprint will help you understand your service and identify gaps and inefficiencies. Use your customer journey map as the basis of your service blueprint and use the outcomes of the stakeholder mapping to determine who should be involved in the service blueprint workshop.
- How might we
Take the problems you’ve identified and turn them into solution-friendly opportunities by turning them into strategic questions.
The Alpha stage game plan
Use this game plan to: turn your hypotheses into potential solutions.
Run this game plan: during the alpha stage.
The plays in this game plan help you to align as a team on the direction of the solution and iterate your solution based on stakeholders and the all-important customer feedback.
- Customer journey map (future state) Create a visual representation of potential future customer experiences with your product or service. This will help you understand whether your design ideas will meet user needs at different stages of the journey.
- Prototyping (low fidelity)
Create a high-level visualisation of how a user might use a future or improved service offering OR
Create a low-fidelity draft of a user interface (UI) to gain early feedback from users.
Note: you do not need to run both versions of prototyping, just choose the one which best suits your project. - Design critique
Run a session to get constructive feedback on your team’s designs, and clear actions to improve them. - Usability testing
Test your prototypes by guiding users through tasks to identify any usability issues or pain points and see what’s working well. - Measuring success
Use the metrics you defined in the discovery stage (using the define success play) to compare the results of your user testing against your benchmark data. This will help you understand how well your prototypes are performing.