We make clear the needs of users and stakeholders, and how the software we’re developing meets these needs. People who build software regularly participate in user testing and research, we define and monitor metrics related to needs and change things when they aren’t meeting needs.

We prioritise quickly delivering the simplest working software (using full-stack frameworks, low/no-code options and existing software where it makes sense) so we can check if we’re meeting the needs of users and stakeholders regularly, then iterate.

We design systems with the right level of scale in mind. We acknowledge when we’re designing a system with the aim of learning but that will be replaced, or one that needs to live in production for lots of users.

We are mindful of introducing additional code complexity with our technology choices and must justify this against our user and stakeholder needs. We consider the impact of our choices on different users and opt for progressive enhancement where we can.

We use shared standards, approaches and tools, including platforms as a service, to spend more time releasing working software than configuring infrastructure where it makes sense.

We default to sharing our work and learnings, unless there is a very good reason not to. This looks like making our code open, having good documentation, and sharing our learning through blogs and other forums.