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.