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https://sfadigital.blog.gov.uk/2015/02/11/what-must-you-have-to-enter-alpha/

What must you have to enter Alpha?

Posted by: , Posted on: - Categories: Agile

I’m a Delivery Manager at the Skills Funding Agency. This is a new role for me and you can read some of my other blog posts about my experience so far.

We're currently nearing the end of the Discovery phrase, where we research user needs, work out what we should be measuring, and explore options and constraints.

Government Digital Services (GDS) list the following items for the output of Discovery:

  • a prioritised list of user needs
  • a prioritised list of story cards to feed into project teams
  • understanding of team and capability required to complete the project
  • ability to scope and plan an alpha
  • a decision to progress to next phase
  • maybe some rough prototypes
  • maybe some user personas
  • a list of stakeholders and input from them about existing services
  • understanding of existing services, including those run by non-government sources
  • understanding of how many of your users will need assisted digital support, and what their user needs are

My question is: ‘can you enter Alpha with this alone?’

Through work I have done as an Agile Business Analyst I have found that a Product Vision and a Product Roadmap are also a requirement. Can anyone suggest anything else that they find is a must have before progressing to Discovery.

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2 comments

  1. Comment by Julie posted on

    In my limited experience most have a vision and some objectives before entering discovery...even if it's fairly simple and high level. Important to note user research throughout discovery and alpha may well have impact on what you thought you wanted to do, so vision may evolve as you learn more

  2. Comment by Piers posted on

    Thanks for the advice, I will put a couple of bullet points around this to add to the output list.