Mastering mess: The liberated method, early interventions and Agile vs Waterfall

Each week a different team member shares their interesting reads, this week Aaron Teater takes over. Subscribe for your weekly dose of insight and inspiration as we navigate the world of complexity...

Liberated Public Services: A new vision for citizens, professionals and policy makers

Demos Future Public Services Taskforce recently published their new vision for public services which does away with the more transactional, New Public Management-inspired approach to public services and moves toward the ‘liberated method’ inspired by the pioneering work of Gateshead Council. As an organisation that prides ourself on taking a more relational approach to service delivery, this is a pertinent thought piece that continues to reimagine how we can achieve a more humane and impactful public sector. By Ben Glover .

Danish Design Centre - How to Accelerate Missions: 3 learnings from a case perspective

Mission-oriented innovation has become an increasingly popular approach for tackling grand societal challenges. In this article, the DDC – Dansk Design Center Andreas Korntved Mortensen explores how to accelerate such missions. DDC specifically discusses the critical role of intermediary organisations in convening, facilitating and creating safe spaces for the many diverse actors in a system to connect, collaborate and innovate. Having been involved in setting up communities of practice and helping councils join up their early intervention and prevention services alongside VCSE organisations, we are highly interested in how we can play this role more within the systems we engage with. The article provides a nice overview of what missions are for those who are unfamiliar with the approach.

It’s Time to End the Battle Between Waterfall and Agile (hbr.org)

This week, during our Agile training, the question of whether to use an agile approach or the waterfall method came up frequently. Because agile is superior to Waterfall in many contexts, especially when tackling complex problems, it is easy to fall into the trap of using it religiously in every facet of a project. That said, agile and waterfall are not necessarily competing in a zero sum game and in many cases can coexist in a powerful way. This article from the Harvard Business Review captures the tension between these two methods and why a blend of the two has become a popular approach for leaders in recent years.

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