10 Benefits of Service Design for Product Launch

Lean Agile Service Design is about identifying the problem, finding the solution, and building the things right. As it is a customer-centered approach, you want to implement the solution in a way that is most valuable and beneficial for the client.

The purpose of service design is designing services that meet the needs and expectations which can be defined as follows:

From the user perspective – useful, usable, and desirable.
From the provider perspective – efficient, effective, and different from competitors.

The benefits of using this approach are apparent, as, at the end of the day, it helps build a sustainable business and leads to business agility.

“One hour invested into design saves 100 hours of development.”

Some other practical service design benefits, which are worth mentioning, are that it helps improve existing features in the backlog, quick test your ideas, improve customer retention and perform service audit. Efficient service design helps double the odds of success and saves you the time and money that would otherwise be spent on solutions without any market potential.

Engage new clients and retain existing users. Develop new features or improve old ones. Analyse what your competitors have got to offer, and how you can use that for your own benefit. Adjust your work based on customer and user feedback. Achieve all this and more by adopting Design Thinking and Lean Agile in your day-to-day work.

The cycle of Service Design in a project

Service design, Lean and Agile are similar in nature but these are all different approaches that aim to accomplish something different in a project. However, having them combined, we can achieve great benefits.

design thinking, lean and agile approaches in software development

Service design comes at the start of each cycle of the project. We begin by exploring the problem, generate insights and ideas. When that part is finalized, we go into prototype and start the Lean phase, and after that comes the Agile part. When the cycle starts over, we find ourselves back to service design where we review what is going on and at what stage our product is in its lifecycle. Thus, the process continues until we have a finished product.

Lean Agile applied to Service Design

Agile implementation introduces a positively new approach to delivering the product. Agile teams work in sprints and divide the workload into smaller chunks. This makes it easier to efficiently track the work being done, consolidate efforts, cooperate, and manage dependencies. But most importantly, it allows the team to create a ready–to–test product that can be delivered in small increments.

It’s important to distinguish what perks come out of applying service design in Agile environments. As mentioned above, agile teams thrive when they have the flexibility to manage the project with all its dependencies and keep in close collaboration both within the team and with the client.

Lean agile is even more so beneficial when we start scaling up. Scaled agile means aligning several teams that are working on one product but probably on different features. The teams have different stakeholders and product owners but they all share a common goal.

“Having that in place, your project or your organization will be heading to the so-called Holy Grail of Agile – Business Agility.”

Summing up, we can say that, as an agile team, you can find many benefits in applying Service Design and Lean Agile to your work process. Symphony Solutions LACE office provides interactive webinars on Lean Agile Service Design, the next online event coming up on December 10, where our experts will first-hand talk about the practical benefits of adopting the approach, share service design best practices and case studies, and answer your questions if any may arise. Also, Symphony Solutions offers Service Design consulting services for when you are ready to take your business to the next level with expert guidance and support.