Leadership of Critical Change
Designing Exceptional Services
Digital Organisation Optimisation
Driving Engineering Excellence
Service Ops Modernisation
Unlocking the CloudOur Manifesto
Introduction
At Axiologik, we’ve been fortunate to work on some important digital transformations.
We approached these projects in a certain way because of the many years of learnings and experience behind us, so we’ve taken our learnings to create our twelve-point manifesto.
This manifesto forms the core of how we approach and deliver digital transformation projects. It’s based on getting lots of things right - and a few things wrong - over many years. It’s the product of real, on-the-ground experience.
It’s a framework; we know there’s no one-size-fits-all in digital transformation.
We’ll modify our manifesto to suit your particular circumstances.
The manifesto is about more than project delivery, though. It also speaks to our culture and values. It’s what we want to be as a business. It lets potential clients know who we are, and potential employees know what we stand for.
Our manifesto
How we make digital make a difference.
- We ensure your strategic goals and outcomes are clear, meaningful and tangible – you won’t settle for fluff, and nor will we
- We’ll be crystal clear on timings. We’ll talk to you about where you want to be, when. That’s what we’ll diligently work towards
- What are your short-term challenges, and what are more long-term wins? We’ll work with you to decide an order of priorities that meets your needs
- We’ll always keep an eye on the bigger picture. We know that a good strategy is about more than delivering a single solution - it’s about driving holistic change. It’s about joined-up thinking
- Digital services don’t get delivered in isolation – they’re delivered by teams working across organisational structures and boundaries, interacting with external consumers, organisations and regulation. We make sure the whole ecosystem operates in unison
- We don’t just focus on delivering software – we focus on establishing the most efficient digital delivery ecosystem possible. We optimise the way the whole ecosystem works in order to maximise value creation
- We model end-to-end value streams, focusing on how value is created across your organisation. We learn about points of friction, waste and complexity and systematically remove them over time
- Our approach is lean, data-driven and continuous
- We understand that most large-scale transformations take place in a complex ecosystem, where we’ll face organisational challenges and constrained architectures. There are usually big problems to solve. That’s all good - we like a challenge
- The sheer volume and complexity of problems can seem overwhelming – so we break them down into comprehensible, actionable chunks. That’s how we get people and teams to understand and engage with our work. Bringing simplicity to complexity is where we excel
- We always tackle the biggest and most complex problems head-on. Unpicking the most difficult issues is often the key to success
- We design whole services – top to bottom and front to back. We’ll leave no stone unturned
- We know that physical and digital aspects of the service must operate in perfect harmony
- We design for edge cases, error conditions and recoverability
- We design excellent support experiences (i.e. for when things go wrong)
- We design services that work for all stakeholders – with the right balance between perfection and practicality (so if it’s not economically viable, legal or safe, we’ll let you know)
- We test service design iteratively with your users – we don’t assume the design meets their needs, we prove that it does
- A project is a process of continuous improvement. We’ll revise the design over time based on data and feedback
- We believe everything should be done with a strategy in mind. What’s the long-term ambition? What’s the direction of travel? If this wider framework doesn’t exist, we work with you to create it
- Our role is to find the right balance between optimising value delivery now, and building new capabilities for the future. We understand the importance of both
- We never just focus on delivering customer features in isolation. That leads to inefficient systems, frustrated teams, services that can’t scale and unhappy customers. We take the broader path, helping upskill your teams and create systems and processes that are easy to manage and grow
- We never work in a vacuum. We talk to users, ask their opinions, and watch them work. We don’t start designing a solution until we fully understand the problem
- When we design services, it’s always with accessibility and inclusivity in mind
- We keep talking, for as long as it takes. We need to understand how new features ‘land’. We need to know of new requirements as they come up. Seriously, you can’t shut us up
- We do all the necessary research and combine it with product analytics to understand how to optimise both what we’re doing and how we do it
- Only results matter, not good intentions. That’s kind of our mantra
- We use target outcomes to order the work we do
- It’s all about getting great results over the lifecycle of the service. To make sure that happens, we balance short-term gains with strategic investments
- We’re always measuring the impact of services using fast-feedback cycles. We always want to improve
- We’re never completely finished. We measure, refine and adapt, based on what we know now and what we learn as we go along
- We build services for performance, adaptability and operability. That means they’re modular and easy to use and manage
- The proof’s in the pudding, so our solutions always provide rich information on system performance
- We use cloud native technologies for elastic performance and in-built resilience
- We find out what failure means to you and build in recoverability to every system
- We test non-functional elements continuously, not just at the end
- Preventing cybersecurity risks and breaches is our number one priority. It’s built into everything we do
- We use secure development standards and practices
- We build security testing into product pipelines. We leave nothing to chance
- Our long experience means we understand cybersecurity risk and know how to mitigate it. But we never stop learning. We always keep abreast of the wider security landscape
- We understand that you want good solutions quickly. We architect all services for fast flow
- We align everything we do to Continuous Delivery principles
- We establish comprehensive test coverage in pipelines
- We work with you to understand and optimise the approval route for product changes
- We always launch new services gradually and carefully before scaling
- We’re fast - but always in total control
- We’re about evolution, not revolution. That means we’ll incrementally improve and change existing services rather than rip and replace. We never assume a ‘shiny new future’ will solve all your problems – the future is a direction of travel, not a final destination
- We get it – speed matters. A big part of our job is improving your delivery efficiency to accelerate the rate features are released to the market. We believe in delivering early and often, rather than pursuing perfection and delivering little
- As you’d expect, we take a lean, data-driven approach to eliminating waste and improving efficiency
- Your performance tomorrow should be better than it is today. That’s our bottom line. Continuous improvement means we focus relentlessly on optimising the way we work and the value of your digital services
- We do this by instrumenting and measuring everything. With the right data, we can speed up delivery, make change more successful, eliminate waste and build resilient services
- We find out how real people are using our services. User research and in-built product analytics help us understand barriers to adoption and conversion, and uncover opportunities to improve customer satisfaction
- We know that cost is always a factor, so we’re obsessive about efficiency. We ask ourselves: How do we reduce the cost of ownership and cost per transaction over time? We ask it before every stage of your journey
Our commitments
Make a real difference
We’re increasing our efforts to make a real difference in the world, both through our work with clients, and in the decisions we make as a business. As well as continuing to support the NHS and others through the provision of digital services, we’ll be strengthening our commitment to being a business for good.
Easy to say, but what does it mean? Well, this year we’ll invest further in reforestation by planting more trees. That will ensure we remain carbon positive as a company. We’ll also be giving back to the community here in Leeds by supporting local charities and community groups both financially and with paid volunteer support from our staff.
We’d love to collaborate with you. Whether that be as a client, colleague, associate or partner we are sure we can do great things together.
- 4 St David’s Court
- David Street, Leeds
- LS11 5QA