Preparing for an assessment
It can be tempting to spend a long time preparing for assessments.
It’s important to prepare, but not over-do it. Do just enough to make sure you can give an open and honest account of the work you’ve done and what you’ve built.
And remember that the panel is not there to catch you out. They offer a peer review of the work you’ve done and help you understand anything you’ll need to change or improve.
What to cover on the day
Spend the first 30 minutes of the assessment talking about and demonstrating what you’ve built. During that time, you’ll need to:
- give an overview of your service
- walk the panel through the user journey
In any assessment, it’s useful to start by briefly setting the scene. This usually means talking about the things you learnt during your discovery and alpha, including:
- why you’re solving the problem you’re solving
- who your users are and what they’re trying to do
- the work you’ve done to understand the user’s wider journey, if there is one
It’s also useful to explain any changes you made based on the feedback the service got at its previous assessment, if it had one.
You probably shouldn’t spend more than 10 minutes covering these issues.
Answer questions from the panel
Once you’ve demonstrated your service, the panel will spend the remaining time asking questions about the decisions you’ve made and how you’ve built your service.
There’s no specific set of questions that a panel will ask during an assessment. It’ll differ depending on the service you’ve built and which development phase you’re in.
It’s a good idea to make sure you and your team are familiar with:
- the Service Standard
- the agile phases and the requirements for the development phase you’re working in
There’s also guidance on how assessors will apply the Service Standard.
Get your result
Your service will be assessed as ‘green’, ‘amber’ or ‘red’. This will be decided by the panel.
‘Green’ means that the service has met the standard and can continue to the next phase of delivery.
‘Amber’ means that the standard has not yet been met, but the issues are not critical. The service can continue to the next phase of delivery while you work on the amber issues. You need to fix amber issues within a reasonable period of time, usually up to 3 months. You must record your progress in a live ‘tracking amber evidence’ document which will be visible to the assessments team.
‘Red’ means that the standard has not yet been met and the issues are critical. The service will stay in its current phase of delivery. Further work needs to be done on the points that did not meet the standard before they can be reassessed. Not meeting the Service Standard doesn’t mean that you failed.
If your service has been assessed by a cross-government panel you’ll get your result in a report within 3 to 5 working days. What happens next depends on the result of the assessment, and the delivery phase your service is in.
Assessment reports
CDDO will publish the outcome of the assessment - see the Service Standard Reports page for a list of published Service Standard Reports. You’ll have the chance to fact check it before it’s published.
Examples and case studies
Read the Department for Work and Pensions’ blog post on " what the Secure Communications team learned from their alpha assessment.
Read the Office of the Public Guardian’s (OPG) blog post on how they prepared the Complete the deputy report service for live assessment.