Retirement Playbook
Note: Work in Progress
This playbook is a direct copy of the GDS agile guidelines and serves as a starting point for CPS specific implementations.
Your service may eventually need to be retired, for example if policies change or if there’s evidence that users’ needs have changed.
When retiring a service you should consider user needs in the same way you did when you built the service.
Consider user needs
You need to consider how the user need your service met will be met after your service is retired.
It might be the case that:
- the user need no longer exists
- a new government service will meet the user need
- the user need will no longer be met by government
If a user need no longer exists
In some cases, policy could change to mean that your service is obsolete, for example when Universal Credit replaced six other benefits.
If a new service will meet the need
If a new government service or services will meet the user need then you should work with those services’ teams.
Share your experiences, findings and knowledge of the user with them so that they can learn from them.
This means you can understand how you’ll support your users through the transition, for example by:
- making sure the new service meets proven user needs
- helping users to find out about the new services in the best way
If the need will no longer be met by government
If the needs will no longer be met by government but by the private or voluntary sectors then you must:
- share knowledge and insight with these organisations, like open source elements
- help the private or voluntary team use the knowledge or information you share
- make sure that users who would normally go to GOV.UK are sent to the new service in the best way possible
Work in Progress!
This site is a work in progress and any opinions contained here are intended to spark discussion within each discipline's community of practice.
Created: 2023-07-26